


Shall We Go to the End

by 12drakon



Series: Make Jazz Not War [3]
Category: Transformers - All Media Types, Transformers Generation One
Genre: Alien Biology, Angst, Dark, Discipline With Flimsy Bondage, Dubious Ethics, Hacking, Helplessness, Hope, Intrusive Thoughts, Lima Syndrome, Multi, Non-Consensual Bondage, Prisoner of War, Psychological Torture, Sensory Deprivation, Slave coding, Spies & Secret Agents, Sticky Sexual Interfacing, Stockholm Syndrome, Synesthesia, Torture, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-18
Updated: 2018-02-26
Packaged: 2019-02-16 15:33:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 11
Words: 36,931
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13056882
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/12drakon/pseuds/12drakon
Summary: Soundwave grabbed the mech of his dreams and refused to give him up. After Jazz’s escape, their relationship lingers in nightmares, and in the piece of fake news leaked to the Decepticons. Megatron’s wrath ensues. With his symbionts hostage to the angry warlord and both factions hating him, Soundwave grows desperate. And Jazz? The saboteur dreams of something better than victory.





	1. Crude Oil Well

**Author's Note:**

> Big thanks to [SunnySidesofBlue](http://archiveofourown.org/users/SunnySidesofBlue/pseuds/SunnySidesofBlue/works) for beta reading. Big thanks to [DarthKrande](http://archiveofourown.org/users/DarthKrande/pseuds/DarthKrande/works), [dragonofdispair](http://archiveofourown.org/users/dragonofdispair/pseuds/dragonofdispair/works), [FHC_Lynn](http://archiveofourown.org/users/FHC_Lynn/pseuds/FHC_Lynn/works), [Rizobact](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Rizobact/pseuds/Rizobact/works), and [ultharkitty](http://archiveofourown.org/users/ultharkitty/pseuds/ultharkitty/works) for chapter discussions.

_The Seeker commander trine - bombing and capture._

_The Constructicon gestalt - beating._

_Vortex and Swindle - torture, humiliation, and rape._

_Soundwave - telepathic intrusion, hacking, sensory deprivation, attempted enslavement, and rape._

_~ The Jazz List_

 

_그래 너 hey 그래 바로 너 hey_

_지금부터 갈 때까지 가볼까_

_Yes you, hey, yes it’s you, hey_

_From now, shall we go to the end?_

_~ PSY, Gangnam Style_

 

Jazz and Bumblebee peppered the narrow ravine with blaster fire, forcing Scrapper and Mixmaster to cover behind boulders. This skirmish was Jazz’s first time in the field since his escape. His armor crawled from the friend and foe checking him out, his stark black and white frame on display against reddish-brown rocks. _Soundwave moving closer, circling slowly as if his captive was on an auctioning block, Jazz’s hands twisting in the cuffs..._

Stop! No time to glitch. Jazz popped up a self-diagnostic subroutine he’d made during the modified training he hadn’t called ‘therapy’ (and Smokescreen hadn’t insisted). Tremors - no, dizzy spells - no, intrusive memories - minimal. Mindscape not fragged up? Check. He’d got this. Just like the simulated scenarios.

Their task was too simple to call for camouflage, even for the violently yellow Bee: hold this ravine while the other Autobots dealt with the ‘Cons who were tapping an oil well. Jazz made a face. Sticky black mess mixed with sand inevitably got into every armor seam. Smelly, gritty, and disgusting, on top of the real danger: energon or mech’s own electricity, not to mention blaster fire, could explode the leaking gases any moment.

At least the Autobots wouldn’t be there long. Megatron had always ordered lowly grunts for the oil detail, and whoever on punishment duty was deemed disposable. Ironhide and the twins should do a quick job of the unlucky slaggers.

Except it had been over a breem! Jazz danced from foot to foot, as if it would help him see over the cliffs, and aborted a comm call. No need to distract the frontliners. Fraggit, they planned this well, but what if his intel had been wrong? What if this was a trap? What if his friends and Jazz himself were about to be hurt, killed - or _captured_?

The saboteur noticed his blaster wobbling. The Pit-damned shakes, creeping up his arms from the tips of his fingers. He cycled a vent, willing his frame still. _Focus, mech! What would past-Jazz do?_

He glanced around for a distraction. Boulders, dust, more boulders - ah! A rock outcrop, right over the spot where Mixmaster crouched behind yet another boulder. ::Watch this, Bee,:: Jazz sent by comm, and neatly shot a crack near the jagged tip of the outcrop. The tip fell down. The light sandstone burst into crumbles over Mixmaster’s head, raining gravel from his silly blocky awning-helm. The Decepticon jumped with a most satisfying yelp, though the blow looked too slight to disable his helm-mounted guns.

::Serves the fragger right,:: Bumblebee muttered, then waved at the rest of the outcrop. ::Jazz? Want me to - ?::

Was an avalanche what past-Jazz would have done? The saboteur shook his head, then grinned. ::What? Mech, I didn’t miss my shot!:: He also didn’t miss Bumblebee’s tiny sigh of relief at that, but his smile didn’t slip.::Just playin’. Worked well enough, see?::

The Decepticons must have noticed the danger and retreated from under the outcrop. Bumblebee took a potshot at the jagged teeth of the shovel behind Scrapper’s back, the only Constructicon-green part still sticking out. Curses echoed from the canyon’s walls.

Yes, the scout was the right mech to spot Jazz on this mission. One of the few who wouldn’t try to convince Jazz to drop the mountain on Mixmaster’s head, who’d not only read, but _understood_.

***

Optimus Prime had debriefed Jazz on the morning after his rescue. By then, Jazz at least wasn’t _looking_ an undignified wreck. He’d had his audials and his interface panel restored, his firewalls repaired - and also, Soundwave’s stolen security recordings spliced with staged scenes into a blackmail video. The Autobot leader sat at a distance, careful not to loom over his much smaller officer, his optics dimmed to a somber steely blue, his smokestacks betraying the hunch of his shoulders. Jazz didn’t drag it out: he told Optimus what the officers had to know, supplied his video as the additional evidence, and formally requested a medical leave. The moment Ratchet chased Optimus away from his patient, Jazz let go of his field-ops mode and collapsed, shaking on the medberth.

Writing his full report had been the Pit.

Jazz heard a loud knock on the wall by his curtained-off medbay nook. “Smokes’? Yeah,” he panted, and waved at his subtle agent, who was fronting a bland friendly smile and an open ‘hug me’ stance of his primary red-blue-white, every-car frame. Jazz dropped his data pad, sat up on the berth, and forced his fans to a lower setting. “Didn’t hear yer steps, like a rookie. Trainin’ time? Gonna wipe the floor with ya, ‘cause I’m still pumped from wrestlin’ this epic beast all morning!” He waved at the data pad with a smirk.

Past-Jazz joked a lot.

“Training time.” Smokescreen cycled a deep vent, and Jazz dutifully followed suit. “May I?” Smokescreen gestured at Jazz’s data pad without trying to take it or steal a look.

“I wrote another sentence today,” Jazz proclaimed with a mock pride. “Here - _‘Mixmaster cuffed me at gunpoint, then...’_ \- almost a complete sentence, too!” He tossed the pad to Smokescreen, who plucked it out of the air with one hand. Jazz lowered his voice. “Dunno why I’m even hyper-venting. It’s just a beatin’, nothing sick.”

“A sentence more than you had before,” Smokescreen pointed out. Jazz nodded with a shrug. “Let’s go?”

They went for a short sparring in a nearby empty room, practicing hand-to-hand combat while Smokescreen gave a theory on Jazz’s writing difficulties. Displacement, some other slag - they agreed it boiled down to trying, resting, then trying again ‘till Jazz’s processor unfragged itself.

And then the saboteur returned to his medberth and his report - _‘...his team beat me for a breem, and then summoned Soundwave. The damages self-repaired after the minimal first aid.’_ He added the event’s timestamp, but none of the graphic details flashing through his mind. The short desperate fight aborting his escape hopes: four Constructicons against the unarmed Jazz, sluggish and dizzy after Soundwave’s invasions of his mind and body. Kneeling on the floor at gunpoint, wrists in magnabonds, coughing up energon from a burst fuel line. Gasping in pain, sparks dancing across his optics when the butt of Mixmaster’s gun had landed once again on the back of his head. The helpless certainty that Soundwave was coming for him. Back at Soundwave’s quarters, the disgustingly tender hands dabbing sealant on Jazz’s bleeding bruises, the soft touch worse than a blow. Jazz kicking and pushing and being shackled to the berth, and then… Jazz decided to tackle the next ‘then’ tomorrow.

No, he wasn’t writing _scenes_ into his report. Everything was brief, neatly tagged, and strictly professional. He didn’t want to breed nightmares in others, so he wrote in dry pithy sentences about his helpless mess of violations, of hacked firewalls, broken fingers, and stolen senses. According to Smokescreen, writing helped to heal. Screw that bitter medicine sideways with a rusty chainsaw! But the past-Jazz and the new Jazz agreed that the Autobots had to be warned, to know the truth, and to be prepared. It was for his friends that Jazz fought through his dizzy spells, full-frame shakes, and roiling fuel tanks.

Days passed. Jazz rested in the medbay, wrote little by little, mostly napped. He went wrestling with Smokescreen or target-practicing with Bumblebee, listened to music, or chatted with Blaster - also about music. They hugged, and nothing more for now. Jazz craved his lover’s company, and still thought of Blaster’s solid, reliable, yet flexible symbiont-carrier frame as _his type_. Whenever a hug made the saboteur’s vents hitch, Blaster slowly stroked Jazz’s back until the sobs went away.

When Jazz released his report, he invited any mech who wanted to learn survival skills to ask him about the details. The report itself had no commentary, no opinion, no conclusions other than a single endnote. The Spec Ops team came - Mirage, Bumblebee, Smokescreen of course, now as a trainee rather than a trainer. Very few others.

Had they even read the thing?

“I know it’s sick slag, but funny how mechs ain’t even curious,” Jazz chuckled.

“Hilarious,” Blaster said, his tone arid. He must have seen through Jazz’s smirk, stroking his friend’s back until the invisible trembling subsided under his touches. “Mech, they read it alright. They wanna give you time to rest. You should! Want to hear the new single I found? Here, I brought you the language codec this time, it’s in Korean…”

The mech had always insisted his name meant rocking music, not the weapon. Good old Blaster’s symbiont dock was catching lights like a disco mirror while he danced in his seat to the upbeat rhythm. He was all the way behind Jazz’s endnote. The others?

The Autobots named the report’s summary _The Jazz List_. They were doing things in Jazz’s name. Harsh things the worried Smokescreen kept reporting to the increasingly incensed Jazz. Wrong things that the other officers couldn’t or wouldn’t stop.

Ratchet huffed, then yelled, then gave up and released Jazz back to his job.

Jazz’s first day greeted him with a nasty case of a private vendetta that must have slipped into a new normal while the Third-in-Command had dallied listening to the human pop: nobody but him was surprised. “Three days in the brig,” Jazz insisted, and wouldn’t listen to Sunstreaker’s pleas that Starscream had kept resisting. “I love you too, Sunny, but he crashed to the ground! A bird in hand, when we should be aimin’ for Megatron. Tearin’ Screamer’s wing off, really? It’s the most sensitive part on a Seeker, and humiliating as the Pit to them. Let’s not pretend that wasn’t torture! Ya gather I wanna be reminded of slag by my friends doin’ the same slag? Think on it in the brig.”

“You’d pretend before,” Ironhide muttered. At a sharp glance from Optimus, the frontliner’s massive gray fists unclenched, and he grumbled, “Don’t you worry yourself, Jazz. You’ll get better soon.”

After a few days of Jazz enforcing his point, the names from The Jazz List all but disappeared from the Autobot field reports.

Jazz wasn’t fooled.

***

Speaking of The List: teal and tan splotches were moving between the boulders. Vortex and Swindle, taking cover from the blasters. The Constructicons must have called for reinforcements.

Bumblebee kept taking potshots to keep the ‘Cons down. After a few of his own, Jazz paused to run another self-diagnostic; with more optimism than realism, he tagged his feelings on this pair of mechs _#BattleExcitement_. Could he and Bee hold the ravine against four larger, stronger fighters? Were there more ‘Cons in reserve?

::See if we can cause an avalanche this time,:: he sent to Bumblebee, eyeing the outcrop he’d shot before.

The ‘Cons must have had a similar idea, except they were aiming to bury the Autobots, shooting rocks right over their heads. But Jazz had picked the position under a sheer, smooth cliff without cracks. Only a few small chips bonked them on the helms; the ‘Cons stopped shooting to try something else.

“Oh look who’s out and about,” Swindle shouted. “Our favorite fragtoy!” The purple optics peeked from behind a boulder. Both Autobots promptly shot over his smirking face, and Swindle ducked. He continued, mock-disappointed, “Aww, don’t be that way, Jazz. I’m sure you miss hard Decepticon spikes.”

Bumblebee turned to Jazz, pain in his optics, hand out as if Jazz was stumbling. The saboteur shook his head and managed a brief smile he hoped looked reassuring. Of course the Decepticons taunted him. Just like the simulated scenarios. He stuck his head out for a moment and shouted, “Shut up, Swindle!”

He knew his retort was weak and his voice shaky. The ‘Cons must have realized that too, because they didn’t even shoot. Swindle said, “That’s all you got? Pathetic. Where’s your famous wit?”

Vortex drawled, “He wasn’t very eloquent last time we were together, either. What’s wrong, Jazz? Ravage-kitty got your glossa? Or should I say, Soundwave?” He imitated slurps and smacks of a messy kiss.

Jazz peeked out, blaster at the ready by his chest. He didn’t speak, didn’t fire. He stood there, as if Soundwave’s name came with a gag and a set of strength-sapping stasis cuffs. The ‘Cons were waiting for his response, neither shooting nor shouting. Jazz’s blaster slowly slid down, as if it grew too heavy for his hand.

Bumblebee was looking at his frozen officer with a mix of pity and doubt, unsure if he should wait for orders or help. The expression echoed the mock-pity in Swindle’s voice: “Difficult topic, Jazz? Oh, would you look at that failbot!” Swindle stepped out to do just that, hands crossed over the windshield panel on his chest. “So helpless to defend yourself, and you don’t even have the excuse of shackles this time.” He made a frame out of his fingers (Jazz thought the conmech might really be recording for one of those sick vids he sold) and announced: “A perfect image. Gentlemechs, this is what I call _humiliation_!”

Jazz turned his face away, as if in defeat, but he caught Bee’s optics, and dimmed half of his visor for a nanoklik. A handy sign they’d learned from the humans: a wink. In one fluid motion, he lifted his blaster, shot Swindle in the shoulder of his weapon arm, and rolled for cover. Jazz was grinning again; he shouted over Swindle’s moans, “This is what I call _subterfuge_.”

His voice rang clear and steady. Yep, he still got this. “One down, one to patch him up. Now we can hold ‘em back as before,” Jazz explained. He shrugged at Bumblebee’s bout of applause and awe-wide blue optics. “Lotsa ‘Cons are fragged up in the processors. It were them sorry afts doin’ the sick slag. Why the Pit should _I_ be ashamed?”

Bumblebee shook his head. “Makes me wonder if the war will ever end. ‘Cons, ‘Bots, we are so…”

“Different?” asked Jazz

Bee’s response was interrupted. “Jazz, why hide? Don’t you want some of what Swindle got?” Speaking of sick slag! Vortex sounded obscenely excited, most likely by the sensations leaking to him through the spark bond with his suffering gestalt mate. The interrogator added, “As you say, _‘Everything's more fun with a little pain, dontcha think?’_ Why, Jazz, I can only agree!”

The saboteur froze, this time for real. Word for word, mocking Jazz’s accent to boot, Vortex had quoted a phrase from Jazz’s doctored vid. From the _secret_ ‘documentary’ the saboteur had made as a threat, to keep Soundwave away!

The quote triggered the playback of a scene from the vid. Soundwave’s heavyset frame shuddering as Jazz tweaked his audio’s sensor wire, on his knees with his hands cuffed behind his back. To Jazz’s angry past self, Soundwave had been a beautiful sight in his forced submission, filmed at gunpoint right before Jazz’s escape. The vid rolled into a fade-to-black, and a cut to Soundwave’s kisses on writhing, protesting Jazz from earlier - framed that way, it looked like kinky play; and then, a close-up of Soundwave’s open lips to the sounds of his lusty panting and Jazz asking him about Megatron’s newest weapon. The voice-over was from the same security camera. In case the Decepticons ran file forensics, Jazz had recorded a few incriminating snippets before escaping.

Jazz’s fuel tanks roiled, and he took a deep vent to settle them. The vid was a disgusting subterfuge: as the story went, Jazz and Soundwave had been _lovers_. They’d staged Jazz’s capture and then escape together, to sate their shared proclivities for power play. Leaked to Megatron, that ‘proof’ of his officer’s treasonous perversions could ruin Soundwave’s standing - maybe get him killed! Jazz had promised to release his vid only if Soundwave paid him inappropriate attention. Jazz wanted his old life back, where the enemies shot at him rather than trying to tame him for a pet. The surveillance officer and his symbionts had kept away, so Jazz had kept the ‘documentary’ to himself and... Frag. Autobot officers!

Jazz jumped in surprise when the ground shook from a big explosion. The rolling boom made his recently restored audios glitch and reboot. What was happening at the oil well?

For a moment everything was quiet, then Scrapper yelled, “Decepticons, retreat!”

The ‘Cons flew away on antigrav thrusters, abandoning their cover: the Autobots never shot retreating mechs. Vortex and Scrapper held the unconscious Swindle between them. From the oil well, two jets joined the retreat in the air. After a klik, another mech followed in his root form. They were splattered all over in oil and energon, probably their own, judging by how shakily they flew. The first two were the expected no-name Seeker soldiers. The third? Blue and white under the filth, the squarish frame of a carrier, the glass over the symbiont dock cracked at the front...

Soundwave?


	2. Out-Of-Tune

_Nature, nurture, heaven and home_

_Sum of all, and by them, driven_

_To conquer every mountain shown_

_But I've never crossed the river_

_~ Puscifer, Humbling River_

“Jazz: tickles.”

A daydream. In Soundwave’s private shower, the piping-hot solvent was washing every tension away from his muscle cables. Clever fingers slid a soft soapy sponge into an armor seam on his lower back. Soundwave trembled, the caress sending a tingly wave through his sensory net. His laughter was silent as ever, but the dream-Jazz knew - as ever. Soundwave felt the come-hither tease through their always-on telepathic link, and turned to catch the mischievous grin fleeing Jazz’s lips in a quick kiss. Their visors were bright in the cozy muted light, splashing their faces in ice and fire. And then, the saboteur attacked the same ticklish seam.

Between the organic filth and enemy fire, Soundwave’s physical space-time couldn’t have been more different from the bittersweet images invading his mind. He dimmed his visor from the harsh glare of the alien sun and fired a barrage of blaster shots, forcing the three Autobots to take cover. They were trying to flank him.

He glanced behind his back to check on the harvesting rig. The poorly calibrated machine was vibrating its way too deep into the sand, but its temperature gauge wasn’t yet in the danger zone. The two Seekers sharing his punishment duty kept on huddling behind a rock outcrop, more afraid of the Autobots’ heavy blasters against their flimsy flier armor than of failing today’s double quota.

Soundwave tried to swallow in his dust-caked intake, forcing his hungry gaze away from the glittering pink cube of energon the harvester had chugged out onto the growing pile. _This isn’t so bad_ : his refrain, weak and automatic from too much repetition, was the closest to the truth today. Lord Megatron was due to review Soundwave’s sentence. A mission off-base, a blaster in his hands, and a time-critical assignment? Hope fluttered in Soundwave’s spark. His humility must have placated his warlord’s rage. Finally! His punishment wasn’t as harsh as it could have been, Soundwave reminded himself. Yet he couldn’t wait to be back from his disgrace, back from the brig, back with his symbionts. His hand reached out to stroke the air, almost feeling the warm flexible armor, as if Ravage arched his spine into the petting.

Soundwave’s shoulder gears whined from the sand. Soon: back to his private washrack.

In his mind, time froze. Jazz was reaching up on tiptoes. He was gorgeous, a glistening-wet, lithe black-and-white arch between his left hand, light on Soundwave’s dock, and his playfully lifted right foot. Soundwave lingered at the perfect moment, then let time go. The saboteur’s lips were soft, warm, and almost real on his cheek. Oft-imagined, never-felt. “Gotta get all the gunk outta ya,” the phantom Jazz laughed, his strong Polyhexian twang spicing up the adorable code-pattern of his voice. “Unless oil in berth is yer kink. Hey, that’s an idea, except…” The smaller mech gave Soundwave’s audio fin a playful pull, and Soundwave leaned over, stroking Jazz’s shapely hips as he listened to the saboteur’s whispers. Licking lubricant from where? Naughty! Yes, please...

_No, please! Focus!_ A heavy red frame - Autobot officer Ironhide - was moving behind the debris. Soundwave tracked him, waiting for a clear line of sight while he took potshots at the other two enemies.

_> Symbiont uplinks 1-6 failed. Retry/Wait?_

_> Wait_

A jab of spark ache, soothed away by the dream-Jazz whispering in Soundwave’s mind. Soundwave was unwell, his last night at the pillory almost as harsh as his first. Daydreams never used to intrude in combat. They used to be so safe, so quiet: his flash getaways from his long duty shifts, enforced idle time at the medbay, or secret bouts of late-night dread over the endless war.

Soundwave’s hand slid around Jazz’s thigh, down and then up, dark blue gliding over satiny-white to Jazz’s interface panel. Hot under his touch, hotter than the shower. Jazz turned up to glance at Soundwave, panting, half-open lips inviting a kiss. And then the saboteur’s smile turned into a grimace of repulsion, and he shoved Soundwave away, growling, “Slag you!”

A memory purge. For the millionth time, Soundwave cursed that ill-fated moment when he’d spied the slick black-and-white car racing along a remote road, and reached to grab his dream.

As if on cue, Soundwave’s comm link came to life. ::Hey, Sounders, guess who I’m playing with?:: Vortex’s voice-code, its every polygon repulsive. ::Your Autobot boyfriend! I only mentioned your name, and he’s already falling to pieces. I’m about to shoot him, once I have my fun. Want a finger or something for a souvenir?::

::His pretty spike,:: Swindle laughed.

Soundwave’s blaster wobbled in his hands, his shots going wide. His daydream-nightmare shuttered, and his processor froze. A soft reboot - and then he saw Ironhide shooting his powerful liquid-fire gun at the pile of energon. The chemical stream ignited on contact with air. No! Battle protocols made Soundwave roll for cover before the explosion shook the landscape.

Soundwave crouched behind a leaking oil cistern, awkward on his tiptoes, trying to avoid the worst of the black gunk. The Autobots paused their assault to cheer. The explosion had destroyed all the energon. The harvesting rig - what was left of it, in three mangled pieces - was on fire.

A costly failure for a starving army. Lord Megatron would be most displeased. His spark flaring in premonition, Soundwave reported, ::Energon: lost. Rig: destroyed:: to the raid channel.

Scrapper acknowledged with, ::Frag you! Decepticons, retreat!::

Soundwave broadcast the order, “Decepticons, retreat!” through his powerful speakers, signalling the enemy to cease fire.

He saw his broadcast’s code: the gunmetal-gray background, white glyphs for the words, high volume noted in binary within a circle made of shapes. The world might be shattering, but his sound-circle never changed. His voice, his pitch, timbre, and pace, seen and not heard, coded by the width, rotation, and size of curves, polygons, and other parametric images.

Soundwave dwelled on that familiar mandala as he’d lingered in the ghostly shower: his voice-code granted a moment of reprieve from the new reality where he lost his focus, was cursed out by soldiers, and failed Lord Megatron’s missions. The only flex in that ever-stable block of data was the volume. Reliable, constant, recognizable. Always, a source of whispered ridicule about his freakish ways. Recently, a piece of evidence helping to convince Megatron that the leaked video was real. Soundwave had pointed out that constant sets of data were easier to replicate; he’d earned a cracked visor for that ‘irrelevant distraction’. Well deserved: his voice in Jazz’s video was real, even if woven into a fake story.

Time to fly. Soundwave stood up from behind his cover. He glanced back, at the two Seekers transforming for the retreat - and a wave of pain rolled over his frame, as the sharp angles and high-oscillating loops coded the culprit sound into an image he could parse: a single shot from a heavy blaster. His leg gave out, agony spreading from his knee. Soundwave fell on his back, the sound-pattern of splattering oil overlaid with the Autobot laughter over the smoke-filled sky.

Soundwave routed his sensory input through his firewall extensions, against the advice of every medic he’d ever let examine his system. The raw data stream of the reality had never been an option; if he re-coded the input from his audios, why not his nociceptors too? He had it under control, Soundwave told himself, aborting the intrusive shower scene that never ended well anymore. He locked his pistons to keep his mangled left knee immobile, and pulled a magna-bandage from his subspace, his blaster ready in his other hand.

_> Symbiont uplinks 1-6 failed. Retry/Wait?_

_> Wait_

His vents stuttered: were that Laserbeak and Buzzsaw in the sky? No, narrow pointed cockpits instead of bird heads, wings triangular rather than squarish - how could he mistake Seekers for his symbionts, even for a moment? The Autobots didn’t try to shoot them, nor came to finish Soundwave. He sat up, ignoring the pain-codes, and stanched the bleeding energon duct torn by the shot. Over the code-pattern that screamed damage and fear - the same alarm as the physical pain, spelled out in a different language - he saw the voice signature of Sunstreaker.

“Oops, I thought the fragger was about to attack! Took me a nano to process that they’re retreating. Creepy how he doesn’t cry out or anything.” The frontliner’s tone was summed as ‘drawl’ and further tagged with ‘regret(false); mocking’.

No, Soundwave didn’t cry. Not since the first joors of his functioning, spent screaming.

He leaned to look around the cistern, in time to catch Ironhide’s crooked grin at the yellow twin. “Roger that, Sunny. Serves him right for Jazz. Roll out.”

The Autobots transformed and drove away. The pain-pattern they’d gifted him jabbed Soundwave as he stood up and followed the rest of the Decepticons in the air. It drew his mind away from the lesser cuts, burns, and dents that signified worse suffering. Unjust retaliation: more bearable, if by foes.

_Lord Megatron: not unjust_ , Soundwave corrected himself. Mistaken about some of his data, yes, and yet Soundwave did deserve a punishment. His collaboration with the Autobots and his perverse proclivities had been faked. He’d never let slip any intel, never enjoyed the saboteur’s pain, and never used the necessary evil of bondage for mere play. Even though the arched Jazz looked gorgeous shackled wrist to ankle… _No, stop._ He couldn’t stand to think that way about Jazz, not anymore. Dream-Jazz refused to be an inconsequential pet, no matter what filters Soundwave applied.

The wind scored his armor, scattering crude oil over the alien green landscape below. The (former) surveillance officer tried to compose the mission report, as Scrapper would likely order. Memory retrieve failed; images came corrupted; the time stamps were out of order. His spark clenched: he didn’t have enough processor cycles!

_> Symbiont uplinks 1-6 failed. Retry/Wait?_

_> Wait_

The wrenching error message blinked across his HUD in the energon-blue of urgency, right over his damage reports, flight data, and the mandala coding the voiced bickering in the raid channel. Soundwave dismissed the error, then Vortex’s comm, ::Of course it’s all Sounders’ fault!::

Of course.

Scrapper’s group was lost in the low clouds ahead. Soundwave deactivated his comm suite, other than direct messages, then his flight navigation subroutines: he could follow the two Seekers flying ahead of him. Seeing how that didn’t free enough processor power, he clenched his denta and turned off his sensory filtering.

His wound shot sharp pain through the leg into his spine-strut - not quite enough to mute what the caustic oil-grit mixture was doing to numerous Decepticon-inflicted gashes on his once-pristine frame. _Traitor, filth, Autobot lover_ , his body mocked him in the voice-codes of his own faction and his lord. His priority overrides were useless, his processor jammed. Soundwave hated feeling so _stupid_. He gave up his attempts to compose the report, and re-engaged his sensory filters.

_> Symbiont uplinks 1-6 failed. Retry/Wait?_

_> Wait_

A reminder to focus on his hollow, everpresent spark-ache. Laserbeak’s wing brushed his cheek; Rumble and Frenzy’s tiny hands grabbed his arm as they had in the brig this morning. Soundwave savored the phantoms till they faded, then dismissed the error message. No force in the universe could stop his spark from trying to connect to his symbionts, but he could have hacked his messaging subroutine not to ping him every two kliks, as he had theirs. He had not. Error messages reminded him that Laserbeak, Ravage, Rumble, Frenzy, Buzzsaw, and Ratbat were there, alive and unmolested - as long as he behaved. Unnecessary threat! Soundwave was loyal to the Decepticon cause and its embodiment, Lord Megatron. Yet there had been moments, the rare moments of weakness when Soundwave had been stupefied enough to crave the escape from his mind, since he couldn’t quit his life.

He should have been stronger, shouldn’t need the crutch of the error message; his punishment wasn’t so bad, was it?

_Lord Megatron in a high rage, punching and kicking the unresisting Soundwave, for the first time ever. Not listening to a word, for the first time ever. Soundwave bleeding on the brig floor, shackled hand and foot. His symbionts in another cell, crying their outrage and terror over their bond; Soundwave trying to convince them (and himself) his execution wasn’t coming next morning. Waking to a savage kick and then, savage relief: his clade would live! And a growing apprehension, the speakers pouring acid on Soundwave’s wounds - Lord Megatron announcing the details of his punishment to the army._

He dismissed the memory purge, then the intrusive, _Jazz must have had a bad moment too_. What did it matter how much thought Jazz had given to breaking his promise?

Soundwave slowly panned his visor from side to side, recording a panoramic view of the more complex landscape they currently crossed: broken gray-faced hills, a brown winter forest by the lake, a human town. His symbionts’ glitches had been getting worse from visit to visit. Their base programming of explorers, lurkers, and spies demanded massive data streams. A bare cell, lined up with bond-blocking tech? It had been wrecking their protocols. At each brief visit allowed them, Soundwave brought data. This would be a treat: a high-definition file of a new environment!

Stop. Why was he over a new environment? Soundwave engaged navigation. His fuel tank spasmed, not from a hunger pang this time. They should have turned toward the ocean much earlier! He comm-ed, ::Seekers: report current route.::

One responded, ::We have been flying on the vector you chose, si… Soundwave.::

The second added, ::You have no business ordering us!::

Soundwave veered to the correct route, the soldiers following along. Not only was the mission a failure, with Scrapper and Vortex sure to push the blame onto their Out-Of-Tune punch bag; he would also be late! Just the excuse… No, he corrected himself, his fuel lines running icy. A _reason_ for Lord Megatron to extend his punishment.

_> Symbiont uplinks 1-6 failed…_

Before his disaster, Soundwave had always counted on Lord Megatron’s understanding of bad luck or unfortunate circumstances - at least for him, Soundwave, the loyal, diligent, hardworking surveillance officer he knew himself to be. Starscream’s punishments had been harsh, too harsh sometimes, but then, that mech had been unreliable, treacherous… Or blamed and accused, as Soundwave was being blamed for every mishap these days? No, this wasn’t like that. Lord Megatron would see that Soundwave had been wounded and disoriented from his energon loss. Maybe his wound, and the Autobots breaking their regulations to punish him ‘for Jazz’, would serve as the evidence that he hadn’t been in collusion with his enemy counterpart? Soundwave could only hope.

They were almost by the underwater base. The dark-purple cylinder of the entrance tower was still over the waves, a Seeker guard’s impatient foot tapping the edge of the landing strip as he waited for the tardy trio. Soundwave flew lower, shivering from the chilly wetness of the ocean, and recalled how Jazz used to shudder. _This: not like that._

Don’t compare, don’t think about Jazz, not even to escape when the landing exploded in the code-image of hurt and damage, as if his left knee was shot again. Soundwave was ready: locomotion overrides in place, pistons locked to keep his wounded leg straight, limping to the bridge without the mercy of a pause. Hook would know, would yell at him for wasting his time and his supplies by making his wound worse. Soundwave bumped into a wall, tried to wait out the nausea, then gave up and turned off his sensory filter. Choose-your-torture. Each step sent cold fire up his left side, but he wasn’t as dizzy. Faster, walk faster!

Mechs. A pair of the Stunticons. Soundwave limped to the wall, giving the tall dark-gray truck-former and his race-car gestalt mate a wide berth, his gaze on the floor in submission that made him sick to his spark, his rigidly held frame and field betraying none of his hurry and pain. They weren’t supposed to mess with him now, outside of his designated pillory time. Still, if they realized he was badly weakened and desperate to leave? They might risk punishment for their chance.

Motormaster scoffed, “Check this out! The Autobots shot their traitor.”

Wildrider brayed a high-strung laugh. “Everybody hates traitors. Was it your little spy lover who got you, Sounders? Did he want you to kneel for him?”

It might as well have been Jazz who fired the shot. His fake video, leaked despite the saboteur’s promises, was the start of all Soundwave’s misfortunes. Soundwave’s next step hurt worse for the thought; he kept on walking, kept the bitterness to himself.

“Pfft, you’ll get more response outta a cleaning drone. Come on, let’s go.”

Thank Primus.

The same taunt: ‘Traitor’. Soundwave’s wound had done nothing to sow doubt in the accusations. Would it matter to Lord Megatron?

Soundwave wouldn’t argue with these irrelevant grunts even if he had the energy. He was pretty sure Wildrider’s voice had not been ultrasound, and yet that’s what the polygons on his code-pattern had claimed. He couldn’t afford such glitches, not in his sensory suit of code, his inner shelter from the unloving universe, perfected over the millennia. Soundwave ran a diagnostic, sluggish from the sensory assault on his frame, and barely managed to fix the tiny error. Was that why Jazz had been so irrationally disagreeable - physical glitches? _This: not like that. Soundwave: not like Jazz._

Not a captured enemy. What, then? He rubbed the cracked cover of the symbiont dock on his chest where his Decepticon brand had been scraped raw and replaced with a new symbol. Out-Of-Tune: the archaic glyph for Soundwave’s new rank. He cycled a vent to stop his shivers. Sounwave would stay strong, would not tremble! Not like Jazz used to tremble from fear and possibly-probably-certainly (Soundwave had convinced himself) from _desire_. At work, Soundwave had watched security camera feeds: the gorgeous saboteur, _his_ Jazz, stowed in his quarters, shackled without any chance of escape, trembling from thoughts about him, Soundwave!

The telepath shook worse than before, the cold-glitch beyond his capabilities to repair, his abused body mocking his resolve. Jazz. It must have been like that for Jazz. Any progress he’d made with taming Jazz: an illusion. Jazz hadn’t been trembling from fearful awe or lust. His underfueled, sleep-deprived, hurt frame had been malfunctioning.

This was Soundwave’s frame now: malfunctioning, glitching, mis-reporting shards of asteroid ice instead of the clammy tepid air of the Decepticon underwater base.

Unlike Jazz, Soundwave had accepted his fate. He’d pay for his mistakes in full, and then, over long dedicated service, would regain his good standing. Lord Megatron’s wrath would wane, and Soundwave would return to his leader’s side, where he had been since the dawn of the Decepticon movement. Together, they would win the war, apprehend the Autobots, and then Soundwave might try again with Jazz. This time, he would…

Before he could slip into another daydream, Soundwave heard Starscream’s shrill screeches, and realized he’d limped all the way to the bridge. He lifted his hand to ring for entry, his access codes taken from him, then paused to wait out a bout of shivering. It could be mistaken for an unseemly apprehension of his status review, even if he was only cold.

It didn’t take an audio system as sophisticated as Soundwave’s to discern what was going on behind the closed door. “Leader, you should have sent several armada trines, not those two drone rejects! Vortex and Swindle frag around instead of fighting, and Scrapper? Puhleese - an engineer? He can’t command field operations, never could, never will. We don’t have nearly enough energon to set up for failures!”

Soundwave froze. A set-up? Impossible!

Starscream kept yelling, apparently not caring if half the base overheard, “Just because you are jealous that your spook took a few joors off of serving your cause to play with his fragtoy! Just because your sick circus of a punishment didn’t break his ridiculous dedication! Have you checked the supplies, or can’t you count that high, mighty Megatron?”

In Starscream’s inflection, the last two words were coded a dirty curse. Soundwave frowned. Starscream daring vulgarity and insults could only mean he’d been ranting for a while. Implication: Lord Megatron would lose his patience any nanoklik.

Indeed. There was a loud clank of metal on metal, and then the unmistakeable bang of a body against a bulkhead. Soundwave’s coding system had no trouble tagging the sounds for him, as well as the consequent low growl, “Shut up or I’ll shut you up! I’ll finish what the Autobots have started with your wings, and then tear your stupid head off for good measure!”

Lord Megatron’s death threats to Starscream weren’t new. This time, they made Soundwave shiver.

Starscream must have believed them, too. A punch used to wind up his rants; not this time. His voice could barely be heard anymore, Soundwave’s filters tagging the tone as ‘gravely serious’: “Leader, please reconsider. The soldier morale is low, and only grows worse from torturing an officer. You must trust Soundwave enough to keep him working his job, so why this? Even a slave code would make a better sense. The war is going poorly. Soundwave isn’t going to be easy to replace.”

Replace? No, no, his death would hurt the cause, Lord Megatron had seen that, he wasn’t going to - impossible! Soundwave’s symbionts shouldn’t die, not for his transgressions, Megatron had no _right_...

The warlord bellowed, “I will smelt the both of you!” - to the low hum of his fusion cannon heating up.

No, it was Soundwave who had no rights. Out-Of-Tune. And Starscream counted on that. Lord Megatron didn’t really want Soundwave dead. Starscream wasn’t really defending Soundwave - when had he ever? No, Starscream must be provoking their master’s wrath against a fellow officer. Starscream wanted Soundwave hurt, killed, or worse: code-enslaved. A usual power play. Starscream: not a worried loyalist of the Decepticon cause. Only scheming.

Starscream’s distraction had made Soundwave tarry! He rang for entrance.

The bridge door opened. Under the incandescent purple-white maw of Megatron’s fusion cannon, and a red glare of his optics to match the heat, Soundwave limped to his assigned spot by the door: barely-inside, isolated, unwelcome. Megatron’s gaze trailed up and down Soundwave’s oil-stained frame, lingering on his charred bloody knee, and the warlord deactivated his cannon. Soundwave’s hope revved up, then guttered as Megatron raised one brow and pointed at the floor.

Starscream stormed out, quivering wings held too high. When he passed near, Soundwave tried a telepathic scan. He found computations for a transcontinental flight trajectory: the Air Commander defending his mind from intrusions.

Soundwave knelt. Fire, chills, strut-wrenching pain; he reeled, caught himself with his hands on the floor, and routed his full sensory stream through his firewalls. His code-mandala pulsed the polygons of his nociceptor data in the urgent energon-blue: the pain was threatening a stasis lock.

Nothing for it; he ignored that data, skipped the pattern’s rings showing the EM, temperature, and other senses, to focus on the outermost circle that was coding speech. Megatron remained silent for a klik, his massive gunmetal-gray frame towering over the prone Soundwave, his red optics dimmed, nodding and grinning at what must be a comm chat. Then the words came, with a renewed glare at Soundwave. “Did you warn the Autobots about the raid, traitor? Did they shoot you to cover it up?” The voice signature was marked ‘angry’, matching the _anger-frustration-disgust_ teek of his lord’s EM.

Was Lord Megatron’s rage due to Soundwave’s alleged treachery, or to being wrong, Soundwave passing every loyalty test of his punishment? He dismissed Starscream-sown suspicions.

At least Soundwave’s constant monotone carried zero data about his momentary doubt. Would that Lord Megatron could sense Soundwave’s true devotion! “Soundwave…” He deleted ‘would not betray Lord Megatron’ from his vocalizer queue. Too close to contradicting his leader’s verdict. He answered the question plainly, “Soundwave: never warned the enemy. Soundwave: failed to win.”

Lord Megatron shook his head and grabbed the broadcast microphone. “Decepticons! Today’s raid failed.” The saw edge of the code-mandala bit into Soundwave’s processor. “We must conserve resources. No rations tonight, washrack heaters off, and half-rations starting tomorrow. Come thank Soundwave in person. You know where to find him. He is Out-Of-Tune for two more decacycles.”

Soundwave’s spark sank. He must have been harboring a shred of a delusional hope. Twenty more days! _Lord Megatron is right: Soundwave deserves more punishment._ Poor team or not, he, Soundwave, was too weak at the raid, too distracted, unable to purge his treasonous affection for Autobot Jazz from his mind. Soundwave had no right to expect mercy. If only he managed to win the raid today! If only he hadn’t tarried until Starscream had upset Lord Megatron, if he’d promptly knelt as soon as he’d entered his lord’s presence...

Soundwave’s orders were not to speak unless spoken to. He lifted his gaze to Lord Megatron - _Please, talk to me once more! Give Soundwave a chance to say he accepts your judgment for the good of the Decepticon cause!_

Lord Megatron met Soundwave’s gaze and frowned, as if in doubt. A shudder of glitch-cold raked Soundwave’s body. The warlord grimaced in disgust, nodded at the exit, and turned to a console. Dismissed.

Soundwave limped toward an emptied storage room next door, where he’d stand for half of his recharge cycle, in a pillory made from flimsy metal and Lord Megatron’s inescapable orders. Soundwave obeyed, he always obeyed; it rankled that Megatron had added ‘ _Or else!_ ’ by writing his symbionts’ names on the door under ‘Soundwave the Traitor’.

Possibly: a mercy? A reminder about Soundwave’s bonded, the light of his life, to help him endure his punishment - like the error message flashing on his HUD every two kliks? _Lord Megatron: has no mercy_.

Soundwave deleted the thought. He simply didn’t deserve mercy. The dizzy weakness his doubts had brought made him linger with his hand on the door handle, as he had on the first night of his sentence.

***

The day was a rollercoaster, even though the shackled Soundwave never left the brig’s floor. The high of Lord Megatron granting Soundwave life, then the low of the Out-Of-Tune status, under the rank and file, under everyone in the army. The surprised hope from being allowed to prove his loyalty by work and obedience, then the dread as the warlord invited everyone to test Soundwave’s discipline. Darker and lower, as the implications of his forfeit body sunk in, as the Decepticons were warned not to hack beyond his sensory net, not to mutilate, not to waste energon by making him bleed, not to make him pass out. A half-ration prize to anyone catching a fellow soldier breaking these rules: a relief, mixed with the humiliation of being a piece in an unseemly gotcha game.

Soundwave spent the next joors telling his symbionts (and himself) this wasn’t too terrible, that they would stay strong, would survive, would be back to their past life. He managed to soothe them enough for a power-save nap, but no amount of self-talk about preserving his strength for a harsh life on half-rations could settle him into recharge. Megatron had called him traitor, Jazz wanted him tortured, he had no friends in the army, and the night was coming. His spark twisted when rough hands woke up his symbionts to take them into the isolated cell. Then the blank, nothing, his panicking spark blind to its bonded, reaching in vain, the pain of the disconnect impervious to any of Soundwave’s filters.

_> Symbiont uplinks 1-6 failed. Retry/Wait?_

_> Wait_

And again, in two kliks. And again. Hook came, removed his shackles, patched him up, and left. Soundwave remained silent and still, flat on his back on the floor, until the door opened once more and he was taken through a jeering crowd to - a storage closet? _They will have to take turns_ , was his first inane thought, his hand frozen for a moment before he opened the door. His pillory was mocking him from the small room, hastily welded and shoddy. He didn’t deserve artful abuse. There was a hush as Soundwave stepped to it and figured out how to restrain himself.

The belly chain first, fastening him to a horizontal rod protruding from a wall. Then a wide U-bent sheet of steel hanging off the chain. That went between his legs, forcing them wide apart. A wave of taunts: “You betrayed us with your legs spread!” - more, in cruder terms, making his tanks churn in shame, Lord Megatron’s voice echoing in the lesser voices that didn’t count. Soundwave tarried in dizzy misery, then fastened the steelweave hood with three magna-openings around his left wrist, his neck, and then his right wrist. That took a while to do one-handed. The hood hung from the ceiling on a vertical rod, blinding Soundwave and holding his arms high.

Soundwave’s fuel lines ran cold, the sound-codes escalating in threat as the crowd egged one another on. They took bets on how soon he’d break his orders and lash out, tear down the flimsy restraints or attack telepathically. They were going to lose, of course. Mere pain wasn’t going to make him break Lord Megatron’s orders, not even pain amped up by humiliation. His awkwardly spread knees and ankles began to ache. Let the cowards quit tarrying, let Soundwave demonstrate his loyalty!

“Alright, move aside, the pro’s gonna do it” - Vortex’s voice, and steps moving closer; of course it would be Vortex.

And, “Fraggit, can’t do his fingers” - Swindle.

Delicate hand repairs took too long, and Soundwave had to remain fit for work. _It will not be too bad_.

Nervous laughter behind him, the hum of a laser scalpel. Soundwave braced himself. He felt nothing, then he smelled burning steel, then he saw shape-codes for a burst of laughter from the crowd in the corridor. The Combaticons were etching something humorous on the back of his crotch cover, weren’t they? What…

There came the pain, the short blade sliding down to his uncovered thigh.

***

Twenty days later, Soundwave stood by the same door, a changed mech in a changed faction. He knew what to expect, lost as ever as to why. That lack of sense made him sicker than hunger, pain, and sleep deprivation ever could. How would it go today? Maybe Wildrider would cut too deep. Why? He couldn’t be hoping to make Soundwave break orders, thrash, or cry out. Surely they must be beyond that. Why risk punishment for the same boring show, only to teek an EM field a shade darker, the locked struts pain-trembling a bit stronger? Only to see their Out-Of-Tune toy bleed?

_Why fight the Autobots, if the same old war had changed nothing in millions of years?_

Stop. This: not like that. He knew the war’s reason, the great Cause! The same reason Soundwave accepted his punishment, even if he’d never stopped wondering why the soldiers were so senseless about it. Swindle would report Wildrider, a recording attached, the first among half a dozen other reports. Why so eager to sell one another for half a cube of energon? Or was it for their never-ending grudges?

While Soundwave counted the nanokliks until Hook came to patch him up, he’d hear a growing row: Motormaster’s dirty curses for getting his gestalt-mate in trouble, then a loud punch, Swindle yelping, Vortex defending his pal… After a brawl, a dozen mechs would end up in the brig cell next to Soundwave’s, standing room only, with a few more at the medbay.

Or some other soldiers would engage in some other stupidity that would make tomorrow’s raid even more likely to fail. Their hopes of hurting an actual Autobot, let alone winning, would drop another notch. Soundwave would keep his orders, wouldn’t lash out. Unlike everyone else, lashing out against Soundwave, against one another, against themselves.

Forcing Lord Megatron’s hand, making him lash out against everyone.

It was all Soundwave’s fault, and he deserved punishment, and yet he wondered: would another day of his misery, or twenty, or a vorn fix anything? _It isn’t so bad_ , Soundwave told himself, the platitude weak. _Soundwave: just too tired._ True, if unhelpful. He was tired; every little thing loomed large. Soundwave hesitated by his pillory’s door, trying to steel himself for spreading his legs. _No, silly Soundwave won’t die from his pain_. Knees weren’t essential organs. If he passed out, whoever was hurting him at the time would be punished.

And Soundwave wouldn’t even derive any satisfaction from that.

The door handle was pulled from Soundwave’s hand. He wobbled and almost fell forward, bumping into the mech opening the door. Vortex. Why here, now, why did it have to be Vortex? Soundwave was already so tired!

“Eager for me, sweetspark?” Vortex drawled, giving Soundwave a casual one-handed push toward the pillory. The rotors on the helicopter’s back vibrated to match the excitement in his EM field. He lifted his other hand to dangle the U-shaped spreader for Soundwave to see, the large ‘Hot Aft’ glyphs, etched there on the first night, still visible under other graffiti.

Dizzy, Soundwave couldn’t be sure of anything. Lord Megatron must have ordered this, right? Or Vortex wouldn’t dare. But why? To spare his wounded knee from the awkward pose? Soundwave grasped at the shred of mercy. He didn’t flinch from Vortex’s slag-eating laughter, the unspoken promise of a laser scalpel and worse on his sensor-rich hips. Soundwave would endure that too, would survive Starscream’s scheming, would wait out Lord Megatron’s wrath. He’d prove his faithful devotion to the Cause, save the soldiers from their own follies, and in time, regain his rightful place within the Decepticon ranks.

He stepped to his pillory, head held high, visor on the security camera that Lord Megatron might be watching even now. Soundwave had never been demonstrative in his devotion: actions spoke louder. Yet in this uncertain moment, he felt the need for the slogan that the theatrical Starscream had coined for the masses to shout.

Silently, his lips barely moving, Soundwave mouthed, “All hail Megatron.”


	3. Gentle Hands

Soundwave’s systems rebooted at once: neither the slow gradual reboot from a finished defragmentation, nor the faster reboot from a self-set alarm. His systems were switched on at once, like a drone: his medical stasis timed out. The shock made him shake on Hook’s operating slab, worse than yesterday’s glitching-cold shudders. His last memory was of falling down, the world slipping away from his mind’s desperate grasp, his weight tearing down his flimsy pillory, and...

_> Symbiont uplinks 1-6 failed. Retry/Wait?_

_> Wait_

No! If Soundwave ever cried out, he’d have screamed. His stasis lock had stolen his morning choice between the medbay and his symbionts. He’d have to wait another whole day, as his bonded grew frantic from the lack of docking.

_It doesn’t matter. Nothing does._ Soundwave froze, as helpless against the dark whispers of his processor as he’d been yesterday, when... Stop. He couldn’t despair. At least, he couldn’t bring despair to his already-frail symbionts. By the time they linked up, he must find a lifeline. He’d faced the false accusations, the fall from Third in Command to Out-Of-Tune pariah, the physical punishments - he would survive… this. Somehow.

He was late for his day shift. Hook had kept him in stasis for too long. A small mercy, to let Soundwave heal? A small cruelty, to get him in trouble when he was late for work? If Hook had been close by, the telepath could have scanned the medic’s unprotected surface thoughts. Assuming the medic even knew why he did what he did. Most mechs didn’t, most of the time.

Soundwave sat up, and grasped the edge of the slab to wait out a dizzy spell. Bad. Yesterday, they…

***

Soundwave saw Vortex taking away the leg spreader from his pillory. His punishment was changing. Megatron’s new orders - why? A mercy, to spare Soundwave’s wounded knee? A cruelty, for more humiliating torture? Whips to his aft, shock prods between his legs, knives on sensitive seams. Soundwave would endure.

A crowd gathered outside of his pillory room. There were almost as many mechs as on Soundwave’s first day at the pillory. Once the novelty had worn off, mechs had largely abandoned him. Silent, inert, accepting his fate, Soundwave made for a lousy torture-toy. Lord Megatron could count on tonight’s announcement of short rations to drive the angry Decepticons to their punching bag.

Soundwave stood in his pillory, optics covered by his hood, mind dulled by his pain. He clenched his fists tight, as usual. If only he had real chains! This flimsy affair couldn’t hold his weight to spare his wrecked knee. Nor could he pull against the restraints to ground himself. The Decepticons gathering in the corridor were jeering - _loser, traitor, Autobot filth_ \- but were strangely reluctant to start. They grew hushed as they egged one another on. Soundwave’s acute audio suit brought him their whispers.

“Ewww, Vortex, fragging an Autobot?”

Soundwave’s tank roiled. They were talking about Jazz’s torment.

“Who cares? He’s a pretty little thing.”

“Hah, yeah, flexible too. It was hot, Jazz wiggling when you broke his fingers.”

“Did the slagger really like that? That’s how they roll with Soundwave, right?”

Soundwave’s fists clenched so tight his fingers dented his palms. He wasn’t coping well tonight. _‘Everything's more fun with a little pain’_ \- Jazz’s words from his fake video. A sick proclivity even between lovers, Soundwave had always thought. A humiliating cherry on top of his alleged treachery.

“Must’ve liked it, ‘cause he got wet - nice close-ups, Swindle!”

“I’m the best. Gimme your ration and I’ll forget you still owe me a tenner for the vid.”

“Maybe tomorrow, I’m too slaggin’ hungry. Come on, Vortex, tell us! Did Jazz liked yer care?”

“Not with me he didn’t, ‘cause I’m not Soundwave. That’s not how these things work, mech.”

“Haha, trust Vortex to know!”

“Frag yeah. Jazz hated it, and that’s half the fun. You’ll see.”

What? They couldn’t, they wouldn’t - would they? Soundwave was a Decepticon - demoted, yes, but one of them! He’d been with the Cause since the start! He was the one to draft the brand on every mech’s chest!

_They do not care about the Cause_. Reprehensible; true about a large portion of the Decepticon army. Vortex and Swindle were only here thanks to their slave protocols. But maybe - Soundwave’s last desperate ‘maybe’ - they would not _want_ him for interface? They didn’t _like_ him!

Soundwave worked surveillance. From the streams he constantly watched, he knew every slur mechs threw at him behind his back: freak, snitch, spook. In the previous two decaorns, they’d said that and worse to face: disgusting as Unicron’s aft, useless drone, grease-stain glitch... Even if mechs would interface with an ugly, oil-smeared traitor - who in his right mind would want a mech so feared?

That’s what had gone wrong with Jazz, despite Soundwave’s best efforts to be gentle. While the saboteur hadn’t thought his captor’s frame ugly, he’d been afraid of every touch. His bravado couldn’t hide his fear, not with his firewalls broken.

A burst of laughter from the corridor about someone’s fat spike brought Soundwave back to his own fate. _They hate everything about Soundwave. Why would they frag Soundwave?_ The obscene word made the threat more real, made him squeeze his legs together. The wave of burning pain from his knee didn’t distract enough. Would they or wouldn’t they? Mech behavior was Unicron-spawned chaos: a nightmare to guess. Give Soundwave big data any time, and he’d make highly reliable predictions. What measure was a mech?

He lifted his face in the direction of the ceiling cam - _Lord Megatron, please!_ He willed a pattern into his sound-coding mandala: Megatron’s heavy footsteps. Any moment, the pattern would appear on his HUD, over what little Soundwave could see: a red splotch where his panic-bright visor lit the inside of his pillory’s hood.

Soundwave heard steps - yes! No? No, wrong, wrong steps, then the crackle of a shock baton. He’d locked his pistons. He couldn’t help trembling, but he didn’t flinch from the electric fire up and down the thigh of his wounded leg. Vortex’s voice appeared, a repulsive code-image slapping Soundwave’s mind: “Open up, sweetspark!” The interrogator’s EM reeked of disgust.

Soundwave didn’t obey. He didn’t throw off his flimsy restraints to fight. He did not assault Vortex telepathically - Lord Megatron’s orders forbade that, _no matter what_. But he wouldn’t open his interface panel, would not and could not, couldn’t even disengage its locks. There must have been pain as Vortex forced Soundwave’s locks with his laser scalpel. Soundwave failed to process it, his systems frozen to his spark.

Disgust, so much disgust - Vortex, still disgusted while thrusting his spike. Wrong. A slap on Soundwave’s aft, another, heavy, stinging. The code-pattern of Vortex hissing swam in and out of focus in Soundwave’s mind: “Stupid frigid drone! Do I have to shock you to get a reaction?” Then louder, to the mechs in the corridor, “I teek that he hates it, but I want a show too.”

A wave of pain spread deep into Soundwave’s chest: the shock baton on the already-cracked cover over his symbiont compartment. He convulsed, jolting out of his stupor. Lord Megatron! Soundwave had been ordered not to speak to his master unless spoken to, but Lord Megatron had to learn about this! His frantic comm bounced dead, Soundwave’s frequency blocked. For all Soundwave knew, Lord Megatron had blocked him the day Soundwave’s punishment had begun.

As if reading his thoughts, Vortex had slapped Soundwave once more as he taunted, “How are you enjoying Megatron’s new orders, you ugly fragtoy?”

Surely Vortex lied. Lord Megatron couldn’t have ordered this, a degradation not only for Soundwave, but for their entire army, their Cause! Yet Lord Megatron was so very disappointed in his once-trusted officer that he might rage at him, Soundwave, if he broke _his_ orders.

Soundwave couldn’t resist. Couldn’t take this. Couldn’t ask for help.

***

Soundwave slid off the operating slab and cycled a vent when his fuel tanks threatened to purge. He kept still to let his dizzy systems adjust, then ran a diagnostic: his knee was repaired; the worst burns and cuts on his armor were sealed. His fuel level read at 48%, still hungry, but enough to function. His frame had been cleaned from the crude oil as well as body fluids, even stripped of some paint, but still reported soiled to his glitching analytics, making him shudder from phantom filth. His patched-up interface equipment was numbed. Hook must have deemed Soundwave’s wounds serious enough that it took painkillers to walk. Soundwave looked down to make sure his interface panel was locked, even though his diagnostics said so. Fresh welds in wrong places; he was plunged back into yesterday.

***

_Vortex is lying_ , Soundwave kept telling himself over Vortex’s running commentary. _Lord Megatron will notice. He will stop this. He will see that I am faithful to his every order, even in the face of this outrage._ Soundwave filtered all his senses through his firewalls, enduring, waiting. The burn of the rough intrusion in his dry valve, the pain of unwilling calipers forced open, the bites of a shock baton he couldn’t see coming - the raw senses re-coded into more complex suffering. Energon trickling down his legs, even the small loss too much for his starved frame. Internal damage.

Vortex overloaded, his pleasure never washing away his disgust. Swindle entered next, then the others. Soundwave deluded himself for as long as he could. _Lord Megatron doesn’t know. Lord Megatron will learn of this. Lord Megatron…_

Megatron: had done nothing.

Vortex and Swindle tortured Soundwave as they’d tortured Jazz. Soundwave felt every mock caress, electric shock, and rough thrust in the agonizing double: once for himself, once for his former captive. Double the pain, double the disgust. Having found Vortex and Swindle with Jazz, Soundwave had punished them on the spot with a vicious telepathic assault worth several days in the medbay. ‘For an unauthorized access to a prisoner.’ Unofficially, for crossing the line.

As kliks bled into joors, Soundwave was forced to realize that Megatron must disagree about the line. He knew what was going on. Everybody on the Nemesis must know about this loud, public, no doubt comm-broadcast outrage. Line, what line? That it was okay to torture a mech and to force interface, but not both at once? That torture-interface wasn’t for the Decepticons?

Flimsy lines; non-existent lines. His despair nearly made Soundwave disobey his orders. He pictured his rebellion: frying the circuits of his current rapist, grabbing a blaster to shoot Vortex in his jeering face, and then…

Then, nothing. His symbionts’ names on the door said so.

***

Yesterday, Soundwave had turned off his filters, hiding from anguish in pain. Now, he had painkillers to thank for unbearable clarity. _This: like that_. Earlier, Lord Megatron hadn’t disapproved of Vortex raping Jazz - of him, Soundwave, raping Jazz. Every detail from yesterday, surging unbidden from Soundwave’s memory banks, reminded him that _Lord Megatron_ had sanctioned that.

_Megatron: wrong._

Soundwave had not been blind to his lord’s technical mistakes. Lord Megatron wasted faction resources on a giant purple laser-griffin and other unreliable superweapons. The warlord had never been a strong strategist. But never before had Soundwave disagreed with his glorious leader on the matters of ideology! Yet here he was, barely able to walk for his damage, and there Megatron was: wrong.

Their cause was in danger. What would the enemy propaganda make of rape as an official army punishment? Wouldn’t it wreck the Decepticon soldier morale, knowing their own faction would do such a thing to them? Did Megatron _care_ anymore?

Yes! Soundwave had to believe, until Lord Megatron’s blind rage subsided. Until they could talk once more, until Soundwave could convince Lord Megatron to reconsider his new destructive policies.

Soundwave let go of the operating slab and waddled out of the medbay, heading to his surveillance room, his gait Out-Of-Tune.

Once in his surveillance room, Soundwave requested today’s access codes from Starscream. He knew the system too well for that security measure to stop him hacking it, if he really were a traitor. Like the flimsy pillory, like much of his punishment, the rule was symbolic. Starscream didn’t gloat about his rival’s misfortune, didn’t berate him for being late, didn’t talk at all, only sent the codes and ended the call.

To think of it, none of Starscream’s Seekers had come to Soundwave’s pillory yesterday.

As usual, the giant surveillance console screen had a dozen security feeds from the cameras inside the Nemesis and the aerial drones. Today, the data streams didn’t feel like flying, like power, like omnipresence. No, they felt like a headache.

He was too unwell to process in true parallel. He managed the streams by turns, one by one, as if juggling a pack of biting scraplets. Soundwave was dropping data packets and he knew it. He thought he saw a suspicious movement, but the data was overwritten with, _Symbiont uplinks 1-6 failed._ He replayed the stream; his valve clenched from a phantom pain, and he had to replay again. The virus of disgust was wrecking his processor.

Soundwave: disgusted with Vortex.

Soundwave: disgusted with every mech from yesterday night.

Soundwave: disgusted with his orders, and…

He aborted the impending thought-crime against his leader, failing to watch the surveillance streams as if his visor was still covered by the pillory’s hood. A soft reboot, a few kliks of work. That suspicious movement: only a cleaning drone. And then, more memories of puzzling feelings.

Vortex: amused with Jazz.

Vortex: disgusted with Soundwave.

Treatment: the same.

The sheer illogic of it made Soundwave’s head spin worse than the dizzy spells from hunger. Yet he’d been the only one surprised, and Megatron… Soundwave had interrupted himself, trying to work, fast-forwarding the streams to catch up, losing chunks of data, helpless to fix that.

Helpless not to think about Jazz. Soundwave had been too gentle, for all he’d tried to make himself be tougher on his Autobot captive. When Jazz had been brought to him for interrogation, Soundwave telepathically stimulated the saboteur’s pleasure centers: a much gentler distraction than physical torture or wave disruptors used for deep hacks. He’d fed Jazz, bathed Jazz, kissed Jazz, and politely brought Jazz to an overload every time he’d taken his pleasure. After Jazz’s stubborn escape attempts, Soundwave had found himself incapable of a proper punishment. When Jazz had despaired, Soundwave had taken measures, tried to cheer up his captive with music. There was no denying his feelings for Jazz. His gentle, illogical, _treasonous_ feelings.

Also: no denying Jazz’s feelings for him. Fear and disgust. Soundwave covered his face with his hands. The painkillers were wearing off, a myriad aches returning. If anyone came by, they would see that he wasn’t doing his job, wasn’t doing anything but falling apart. Then what? In a flash of clarity, Soundwave realized he would not last many more days. What was his punishment all about? A drawn-out execution, the last of Soundwave’s resources used up for the amusement of the troops? Or the determined stand of the stoic loyal soldier, wronged and then proven innocent? If only he knew which story he was in!

The evening came. Soundwave walked past the Stunticons lounging by his pillory’s door in wait, the somber gray truck-former bulk of the gestalt’s leader looming over the four sleek car frames. Soundwave’s spark gave a lurch, but he held his head high, avoiding their hungry optics as he tuned out their revolting thoughts. Inside, he found that nobody had bothered to reattach his hood to the pole, though cleaning drones must have been in, because energon and other fluids were scrubbed off the floor. The toy: now more poseable. Shuddering, Soundwave sat down in the far corner and pressed his knees together. _Just like Jazz used to sit._ Soundwave cycled a vent, then began attaching his restraints. He magnetized the hood’s collar around his neck, and fastened the cuff around his left wrist, but his hands were shaking so badly he couldn’t make the second cuff engage.

Heavy steps walked in, impatient hands snapped the cuff shut for him, and then a heavy foot kicked him in the abdomen, making him bend over and fall to his side, drowning in the flood of heavy disgust. Motormaster.

The leader of the Stunticons dragged Soundwave out of his corner and threw him face down. Motormaster beat Soundwave as silently as Soundwave took it, while the other Stunticons cheered and jeered. Was Motormaster going to - a quick scan: no, the truck-former’s surface thoughts betrayed no perverse intentions. The fanatically loyal mech, forged so recently that he and his gestalt had never known life without slave coding, only had pain on his mind. Punish the traitor. Soundwave’s vents heaved a relieved sigh, aborted by a shock. The electric jolt pierced a transformation seam on his back, spreading through his wires. His sensory net blanked out for a moment, then onlined on fire. Soundwave gasped air, detecting smoke from burned circuits.

Motormaster must have his shock baton on its highest setting. Soundwave’s frame was craving stasis, but if they took him to the medbay, he would skip his symbiont visit. His deepest coding revolted.

For the first time since his punishment had begun many days ago, Soundwave spoke to one of the mechs who came to hurt him. “Motormaster: Vortex wannabe.”

“What do you mean by that, slagger?” the mech growled, and kicked Soundwave so hard a strut snapped in his side.

Soundwave coughed, careful to swallow back the half-processed energon he couldn’t afford to lose. “That setting: can kill a prisoner. Stasis: highly probable in two or three shocks.”

“That’s funny, him giving you punishment advice,” giggled Wildrider.

“He doesn’t want to die,” Dead End remarked, his gloomy voice fitting the occasion for once. “Though I can’t imagine why.”

“Lord Megatron ordered him kept alive and conscious, boss,” Drag Strip reminded.

Something hit Soundwave, something much lighter than Motormaster’s massive foot. Motormaster must have thrown his shock baton in frustration. He said, “Fine,” and his heavy steps moved away.

“My turn!” Wildrider laughed.

Soundwave stayed awake, if barely.

Dead End was the last of his team. He turned Soundwave over, making him kneel low with his mesh-hood on the floor. Soundwave hid his face in his hands, making his pose even more humiliating than Dead End could see, but Soundwave was done caring. Was done. _Just get this over with._

Dead End paused with his hands on Soundwave’s hips. “Why Jazz, anyway? Is it ‘cause he’s pretty? We got pretty cars. Wildrider here would tie you up if you asked.” In the code-mandala, his tone was marked as slight curiosity.

Soundwave didn’t answer. He also didn’t reply to Dead End’s melancholy, “Fine, spread your legs.” He did, and then - raw pain inside. It failed to distract. Strangely detached, Soundwave’s muddled processor circled around the question.

Why Jazz? Soundwave had wondered before, but hadn’t found an answer. The Decepticon surveillance officer had to pay attention to the Autobot’s head of Special Operations. At some point, he couldn’t remember when, Soundwave had started to daydream about the pretty saboteur. And then he’d caught Jazz and kept him, chasing the dream through the clashing realities. Couldn’t give Jazz up. Despite the Decepticons growing suspicious. Despite Lord Megatron growing angry. Despite Jazz sinking into black despair. Soundwave had been unable to part from his… What? Enemy, captive, lover? Why the dream?

Why Jazz?

“That’s like using a hole in the wall, only dirtier,” Dead End complained. “Soundwave, I order you to react!” His voice was still melancholy, as if he knew he spoke in vain.

Others had tried that, and also failed. Soundwave’s mind had kept tight control over his frame. Exhausting; impossible, if not for his unique sensory protocols, fortified by Lord Megatron’s words. “Loyalty’s an empty term when your life is too good! I’ll see how loyal you really are at the pillory. Will the stoic Soundwave keep stoic?”

Had Megatron taunted Soundwave, or to given him a loophole, the warlord’s order overriding everyone else’s? A mercy, making the bored Decepticons leave Soundwave alone, and throwing him a iota of control to keep him sane? A twist of the knife, forcing Soundwave to torture himself, trying and inevitably failing to restrain a stray twitch from a shock baton, a pulse of pain into his EM field, or a spasm of his valve’s calipers?

If only he had the same control over his emotional matrix! Why Jazz? Maybe there was no reason, no meaning, maybe Soundwave had thrown his life away for nothing. The thought terrified him more than sounds of another mech in the corridor.

Dead End left, and Soundwave closed his interface panel over the mess, for all the good it was going to do.

Unsure steps approached, and unsteady voice said, “Soundwave, you’ve been keeping the scary ‘Bots away. And now, you are hurt.” Breakdown.

What - a kindness? Someone appreciated his work, and wasn’t happy about his demise? Even if the sentiment came from Breakdown’s glitchy fear of every shadow. Soundwave scanned Breakdown’s surface thoughts and his spark sank. Pity was there, was real - and painful, though Soundwave would take pity over hate. Also there was the other intent.

Soundwave wanted to crawl into the far corner and curl up; he had to lock his pistons to stop himself. He sent his senses into his code-mandala and waited, shivering.

Gentle, gentle touches on Soundwave’s abdomen: Breakdown’s hand stroking him. The feather-light caress didn’t register as pain even over burns and cuts. Soundwave’s system still coded it as torture. The hand then went down to stroke his bruised thigh, sliding through other mechs’ transfluid mixed with Soundwave’s energon.

Soundwave shuddered. He didn’t want pain, no; he had to stay awake for his symbionts, but this, this... this petting! He ran a diagnostic: no new sensory glitches; it was his emotional matrix that put him on the rack. Why?

Why Jazz?

Breakdown, meanwhile, must have taken a polishing cloth and solvent out of his subspace, because Soundwave saw in his code-pattern that his pelvic area was being stroked, rubbed, cleaned. Softly, gently the cloth went - he winced away, unable to bear the humiliation.

“Oh, you poor wretch,” murmured Breakdown. “This must be too raw. How about I lift your hood a bit and you take my spike in your mouth? That’s not gonna break the orders, will it, because it won’t damage your face. While I am here, you won’t be hurt at all!” he said, his voice signature coded smug and… Caring?

Soundwave’s tanks roiled, his emotional matrix rising in revolt against his logic circuits. He’d trade for Motormaster’s shock baton at the highest setting.

He didn’t resist as Breakdown loosened the hood’s neck magnets and pulled Soundwave up to stand on his knees. Soundwave retracted his face mask and opened his mouth.

Breakdown’s lukewarm spike wasn’t too large, and didn’t make Soundwave gag. It slid in and out at a slow, steady pace, Breakdown guiding Soundwave’s head with gentle hands. It didn’t hurt, as promised. It just wrenched Soundwave’s spark.

“I will make this last so others don’t come for ya,” Breakdown promised.

A favor. Soundwave didn’t gag even at that. He was thinking about Jazz again. Why Jazz? Why? Jazz? As Breakdown took his time, Soundwave ran back through the details from when he and Jazz had been together. The saboteur, in Soundwave’s berthroom, gently restrained, gently taken, Soundwave’s hands stroking black and white armor that… shuddered under his gentle touches… because…

He gagged violently. His spasms took Breakdown over the edge, transfluid spilling down Soundwave’s throat and sputtering out over his chin.

Breakdown wiped Soundwave’s face and throat for him. With care. Just like Soundwave had cleaned Jazz.

When Breakdown let go of his head and shoulders, Soundwave fell to the floor in a heap of misery. He didn’t react when Breakdown, sounding sincere, wished him a safe night. He didn’t stir when the next mech, he didn’t wonder who, came in, half-heartedly kicked Soundwave a few times, muttered, “Yer a slaggin’ mess,” and walked out.

If Jazz had to be grateful to Soundwave for sparing him a harsher fate, then Soundwave had to be grateful to Breakdown. Logical; impossible. He tried not to be stubborn, as Jazz had been, to feel reasonable. He failed. Again, and again, in an infinite loop.


	4. Lord and Master

The former surveillance officer was dosing in power-save. He was curled up in the corner of his pillory room, knees pulled up to the Out-Of-Tune glyph on the cracked glass of his symbiont compartment, pain kept at bay by exhaustion.

The only piece of restraint still left to Soundwave, besides his orders, was the steelweave hood. His head was covered; the Decepticons didn’t have to meet his visor when they hurt him. His wrists were tied by his neck; he couldn’t brace himself when thrown face down.

Soundwave’s second punishment shift under the new rules was almost over. He’d routed his senses through his firewalls, into the coded mandala on his HUD, jammed his processor with trajectory calculations, and managed not to pass out. It was late, and he’d been left alone. The soldiers were either on guard duty or early to berth to save their energy after the meager rations.

Tonight, he’d been visited by fewer mechs than the night before. None of those who’d come to punish him yesterday - to _force_ him - had come back for their seconds. The word spread, as Vortex had put it, _‘Boring as all slag. The glitch must take four million years of spy foreplay to warm up. Who got the time?’_

Soundwave woke up from steps in the corridor, the sound-code that he hated to see on his HUD. He kept his protective pose while allowed, chest shielded by knees, face covered by hands. He locked his pistons and turned on his sensory filters before the steps stopped next to him.

“Heya, Sounders! Quiet night?” The twitchy tone-polygons, volume jumping up and down: a sales-mech falsely sweet voice print Soundwave prioritized on surveillance microphones, even though Megatron was as likely to laugh off Swindle’s shenanigans as punish them.

Soundwave’s side flared with ache: Swindle kicked him, not hard, but well-aimed at a nasty bruise.

If Swindle was disappointed that Soundwave hadn’t reacted, his EM field didn’t show it. “Ha, that’s our old Soundwave! As responsive as a chunk of the asteroid ice.”

Good. A measure of hope, if pale.

Swindle continued, in the same smarmy tone, “He just lies there and shivers, doesn’t he?” - Was Soundwave shivering? He hadn’t realized. “Nowhere nearly as fragtastic as his Autobot buddy. And that’s a problem, gentlemechs!”

Swindle must be filming one of his sick videos. Soundwave didn’t care to confirm another pebble on the heap of indignities with a telepathic scan. What difference was a film, however graphic, when every Decepticon was offered an interactive live experience?

“Fear not!” Swindle gave a laughter Soundwave’s code-mandala labeled fake. “We have a solution for the pesky berth-icicle. This small device is a _physical_ hack,” he emphasized, as per Megatron’s rules. “It overrides frame inhibitions. Simply plug it into his wrist” - Soundwave’s arm was grabbed. A cold plug in his medical port sent a stronger shake through his frame. He primed his firewalls to fight disruptor viruses, but the machine stayed dormant - “and enjoy a wide variety of your fragtoy’s reactions, including but not limited to squirming, kicking, EM pulses, and who knows? Maybe even moans! Come tomorrow for a demo by the inventor himself. Your friendly local interrogator surely knows his way around a mech’s frame. You can rent the device by the breem. Trine and gestalt discounts available upon request!”

Swindle paused, probably for some of his infamous close-ups. Soundwave’s restrained arms? His aft and thighs, scratched up and covered in drying fluids? Swindle pulled out his device, and muttered, “Cut.”

Mechs had tried before, Vortex more than others. The hacks that dialed up his sensors or directly caused pain, Soundwave had let through, as per Megatron’s orders to take his punishment. The sensory system overrides, while technically physical hacks, he’d blocked, as per Megatron’s orders (a loophole - no, no, orders) to stay stoic. If Swindle was sure enough to film an ad, Vortex must have learned too much from his repeated assaults on Soundwave’s firewalls.

Soundwave lay as he had been, but now, it took everything he had not to… What? Pleas would be recorded for advertising. He couldn’t strangle Swindle with his bare hands, or enact any other manner of violence flashing through his processor. Even if he was ready to break Megatron’s orders - _was he?_ \- Soundwave’s bonded would be hurt. He remained still in his helpless misery, to be talked at by the con-mech.

“Dunno if I’ll get any trines. Bah! Stupid Starscream. How is this ‘rape’ if it’s by the rules? Besides, you don’t even say ‘No’, do you, Sounders?”

Not expecting an answer, Swindle left. Who had he been trying to con with his ‘reasoning’? Himself? Soundwave? It was a testament to Soundwave’s muddled processor that the deception he recognized as such still _worked_. Soundwave was under a justified punishment - that was right. Wait, no, that was Swindle lying, Soundwave hadn’t wanted any interface, had been forced by his own faction - that was wrong. Two logically contradicting statements, tagged true at once, made his processor itch in an infinite loop.

“Please.” Soundwave turned to face the ceiling. “Lord Megatron, please.” His lips moved without uttering a sound; the security camera couldn’t see through his hood; the warlord wouldn’t have paid attention even if he weren’t asleep. A part of Soundwave was sane enough to see these realities, yet the blind panic made him plea. For what, exactly?

It took his tired processor a while to formulate his dread. If he couldn’t stay boring, the earlier crowds would come back. Is that what Vortex wanted, so much damage (no part of it against the rules) that Soundwave would be fragged to death? No, that couldn’t be it. Soundwave would pass out first and get repaired, Vortex wouldn’t work so hard for that. Was it for control then, to rob the stubborn Soundwave of his last iota of choice as the rest of the army had been trying to do ever after Megatron had set up his… Wait.

Megatron’s orders!

If Soundwave’s body winced and pulled back, it would also resist its abuse, and nothing he could do to stop that. Swindle might want to make a quick coin, but he’d been deceived by Vortex. If Soundwave wasn’t in control of his body, he’d lash out at his tormentors and be punished. Not much was left to make his fate worse. Vortex must wish the worst on Soundwave: slave coding, execution, death of symbionts.

“Please, Lord Megatron” - silence, of course. “Jazz! Please, Jazz…”

The glyphs appeared in his code-mandala, startling Soundwave: the hard evidence that his voice had really made that whisper. What was he doing? What precisely was he asking the Autobot saboteur - to fight the Decepticons on Soundwave’s behalf? Soundwave deserved any punishment! But nobody deserved torture with interface, that was wrong, and his symbionts deserved none of this...

Once started, the vicious infinite loop only grew worse.

A buzzer. Slowly, every movement hurting, he took off his hood and put it down in a somewhat less soiled patch of the floor. His quarters, his office, and his frame used to be spotless in the dim past Soundwave could barely recall. Was he supposed to do something, feel something?

He did a soft reboot. It aborted his logic loop and cleared his stack overflow. Soundwave pulled a polishing cloth out of his subspace and rubbed some of the mess off his thighs, so that at least it would not drip as he walked to the washracks. He’d been spending inordinately large chunks of his days in daydreams about hot showers: the five kliks he wouldn’t shiver.

Soundwave walked to the washracks, at first limping with each step to try and ease the pains shooting through his pelvis, then in his usual gait because that made no difference at all. He turned the shower controls to his favorite temperature, his armor plates shifting loose to let in the warmth, and turned on the solvent. A jolt worth a shock baton. Cold! How could he forget the new austerity measures, after several mechs had thanked him with their knives especially for that?

Soundwave stood under the cold solvent, shaking violently, rubbing his aching armor with a washcloth to remove the traces of other mechs from his frame. He didn’t think he’d be able to block the last two days from the symbiont bond, but it would spare them a bit of distress if he didn’t smell like rape.

He took the shower head down to aim at the most disgusting parts directly, and hesitated. The time was running out. With a hasty override, he forced himself to open his interface panel cover, aimed the nozzle into his valve, and shuddered from the sick mixture of pain and unwanted pleasure the stream teased out of his abused sensors. And then he had a memory purge.

***

Soundwave turned Jazz around before rubbing the sponge over his chassis, brushing over his red Autobot insignia, then dipping down to his abdomen. “Open valve,” Soundwave ordered.

Jazz’s milky blue optics glared at him. “Slag you,” he growled.

Soundwave sighed, exasperated. “Interface not intended. Cleaning necessary.”

Jazz closed his legs tightly. “Maybe if it stays a mess, then you’ll be less inclined to put things in it,” he snapped.

Soundwave glared at the obstinate saboteur, and swore the mech would learn to submit and obey, in time. For now, he held Jazz firmly against the shower wall, pried his valve open, realized the cover was starting to dent, and decided to remove it for convenience’s sake.

He wedged his finger under the panel. “Brace yourself,” he warned before giving a quick tug.

Jazz howled, though it shouldn’t have hurt that much - you’d think Soundwave had taken off a finger. Nonetheless, he soothed the area with a gentle stroke around the edge of his now-exposed valve. Jazz immediately quieted, then snapped angrily, “Just clean it already!”

Soundwave held Jazz’s hips still as he aimed the showerhead’s nozzle at Jazz’s open valve, making him jump and gasp. Soundwave held the nozzle closer, shooting the stream of liquid straight up Jazz’s valve to wash him out good. His hips jerked and shuddered.

Soundwave was pleasantly surprised at the reaction a simple cleaning was getting out of the mech, and pressed the nozzle directly to the rim of his valve so the full pressure of the solvent was rushing against Jazz’s sensors. Jazz cried out…

***

The washracks automatically shut down. Soundwave’s five kliks were over. He must have grown dizzy while in the nightmare: he found himself on the wet floor, raked by silent sobs. As if watching himself from a distance, he took a cloth from the shelf to dry off, and closed his interface panel. Still, the shower must have helped. By the time he walked out into the corridor, his vents weren’t hitching anymore, his beat-up frame was reasonably clean, and his EM field was pulled back as tight as usual.

Maybe he could do it. The rest of the night was his for recharge; then the symbiont visit, and then he’d sort data all day, his usual work a measure of comfort. And when the next night came? Maybe Vortex’s device would fail against Soundwave’s custom defenses. He was going to spend tomorrow fortifying his firewalls. He would resist! He could: Lord Megatron had said he wanted to see Soundwave stoic under punishment.

He set out for the brig, each step a crop of pain. Serious damage? He deserved it for… Soundwave froze, his usual self-talk about his punishment derailed into a new feedback loop. He wobbled, weak-kneed, and leaned on a wall.

He may not survive until his next status review, and then his symbionts would offline shortly. Wrong, that was wrong, as he knew to his core. If so, maybe it was wrong for Soundwave, as well, to be in quite that much gratuitous pain? If his symbionts, and himself, why not every mech, _every sentient being_ as Optimus Prime’s motto went? Was it wrong that no Decepticon had rights to his frame, only a privilege, now taken from Soundwave by their lord? Was it wrong to hurt the Autobots? Like cosmic rust, the longing for rights spread, from the basic selfish wish not to be in pain to the highest levels of meta in his processor.

The tired guard silently let him into the brig and then into the cell where Soundwave recharged. Soundwave couldn’t see, hear, or otherwise sense his symbionts from here, but the recurring error message, _Symbiont uplinks 1-6 failed. Retry/Wait?_ hit him stronger than before. He imagined his little ones so close, only two cells over, hopefully in recharge in a warm cuddle pile. Between his crumbling ideology and his urge to reconnect the bond, he couldn’t initiate recharge for a long while.

Soundwave onlined to his alarm, still exhausted, defragmentation unfinished, itching from the self-repairs, and, of course, shivering. At least the cold wasn’t imaginary here: the brig was by the hull,  wet with icy salt water seeping from the micro-cracks. He pinged Hook with today’s choice: symbiont visit rather than medbay. Soundwave knelt on the wet floor by his cell’s door and waited for Hook to relay his request. Only Megatron had the codes to his symbionts’ cell.

Lord Megatron used to be such a good master. Just like Soundwave had wanted to be a good master for Jazz, even when Jazz kept trying to escape. Instead, Soundwave had only hurt his captive, as Megatron was now hurting Soundwave for his dream-escape with his dream-Autobot. No, worse, because Jazz had never wished to serve Soundwave, except for one glorious, terrible moment at the end, when he pretended on camera that he...

The door opened, interrupting Soundwave’s thoughts. He bowed low.

“Come already,” the warlord growled, visibly impatient to get on with his day.

Soundwave followed Megatron out the door, to the cell one over, his spark pulsing madly, as if its corona tried to reach out with protuberances, to arrive there faster. The door opened, gleaming coppery on the inside where extra shielding had been welded to it, and Soundwave’s spark finally linked up to the symbionts.

Something was different. The spark-bond felt hushed, and nobody flew or ran at Soundwave. The symbionts were still recharging, in a heap of paws, arms, and wings, just as he pictured them last night. Except the few times he’d found them asleep, they had always woken up as soon as the door opened. The warm wave from the bond was the best of alarms.

Hurt? Sick? _Did Megatron break his promise?_ Soundwave ran a scan; the symbionts were in the deepest energy-save mode, critically low on fuel.

Soundwave whirled toward Megatron, mute under his orders. He knelt with a loud clang, and let his tumultuous EM field unfold toward the warlord.

“What now?” Megatron sneered.

Soundwave replied, his voice-pattern unchanged as ever, except for its raised volume, “Mistake: apparent, Lord Megatron. Symbionts: not fueled in two days.”

Megatron glanced at the pile on the berth and shrugged. “Hmm, really?” he said lightly, his optics dimmed - probably on a comm chat with someone else. “Slipped my mind. Here, give them this” - he took a standard energon cube out of his subspace, worth a daily ration for the symbionts. “And here’s yours” - handling Soundwave a half-empty cube.

Was Megatron deceiving Soundwave, toying with him? Was this an intentional new cruelty? Soundwave’s carrier protocols wrestled with his stubborn loyalty, and won. As Megatron turned to leave, Soundwave scanned his surface thoughts, for the first time in history.

There was no duplicity, no glee, no malice, though the warlord was, in fact, thinking about fuel: the new cocktail Mixmaster made special for him.

Megatron exited the cell and shut the door.

Soundwave stroked the two smaller fliers awake first, massaging their wings. The flier frames burned more energy. Laserbeak and Buzzsaw snuggled to his hands, then fell to the two cubes offered. They stopped when they took a quarter of a cube each, careful to split the fuel equally between the six siblings. Soundwave had never fueled in this cell before, and didn’t tell them he’d go hungry. They felt sluggish over the bond, even after Soundwave sent them what good visuals he’d collected during the raid. He fed Ratbat and Ravage next, then Rumble and Frenzy.

“Ya look like slag warmed over, boss,” Frenzy muttered. “Can I dock?”

Here it came. Soundwave paused, but he couldn’t spare them the knowledge forever. One by one, the symbionts slotted into his chest. Soundwave synced, then ran through their code as fast as he could, smoothing the glitches away. Meanwhile, their systems merged, symbiont memories dual-processing with his powerful routines. Their recent memories, as well as his, were inevitably, inescapably shared.

A buzzer. Soundwave ejected the symbionts onto the berth and knelt by the door, waiting for Megatron to let him out.

The symbionts huddled together, silent, scared into stillness even in the spark bond. Soundwave had no words for his clade, no concrete hope, only care. That, he kept pulsing at them.

Megatron opened the door promptly - one breem and no more - still looking distracted. “This better be as urgent as you say,” he growled at someone on the comm, speaking out loud as if Soundwave wasn’t there, and added, “patch your report through to the brig’s console.”

Soundwave wouldn’t be cut from his bond for a few more moments. He knelt, head low, soaking up the presence of his clade, as they were his. He began to sense their first shell-shocked reactions to his memories, Laserbeak’s outrage, Frenzy’s sullen despair, Ravage’s murderous anger. Out of the corner of his visor, he watched Megatron throw the morning guard out of his chair by the console, and take his place. As the warlord was turning around, his gaze fell on Soundwave; for a nanoklik, it held a fleeting, strange, very un-Megatron sorrow.

As if Megatron had said his good-byes and moved on.

He scowled at the report, cursed as only a miner-gladiator-warlord could, and jumped up to his feet. “With me, Soundwave,” Megatron growled.

The insulated door slammed shut behind Soundwave’s back, and the energon-blue error flashed on his HUD, _Symbiont uplinks 1-6 failed. Retry/Wait?_

On the bridge, Megatron announced a raid, assembled teams, assigned duties. Soundwave listened the best he could, kneeling by the door, bowing low, hopelessly dizzy from hunger. He’d have to stand up soon, then go fight in that raid somehow.

A setup for a failure, and then a worse punishment - execution, or slave coding? A simple neglect, Soundwave’s better hope these days?

He would have to avoid wounds this time, so he wouldn’t pass out, so he would be there in the brig to remind Megatron to feed his hostage symbionts. Assuming Vortex’s hack didn’t work.


	5. Won't Talk

None of the mechs in the stormy sky were paying Soundwave the slightest attention. _Let it stay that way_ , he begged nobody in particular. A target for the cranky, tired, hungry soldiers vying for the raid bonuses? Better the humans than him. The officers…

::Leader, please reconsider!:: Starscream’s scratchy whine used to have an annoying shape in Soundwave’s code-mandala. Its incongruous polygons lacked symmetry and balance. Out-Of-Tune, like Soundwave: now a welcome voice, one of the few that didn’t evoke graphic memory purges. Soundwave couldn’t afford those, couldn’t...

_> Symbiont uplinks 1-6 failed. Retry/Wait?_

_> Wait_

...Couldn’t afford to fall apart. He could barely keep up with the flying troops as it was.

::Beware, Starscream! Never stand in the way of my plans. You will be allowed to toy with your ‘sustainable energy’ after the drill brings us victory. Copying the Autobots’ geothermal works?:: The sudden, familiar malice in Megatron’s hiss made the soldiers recoil. The warlord was left to fly alone in his invisible bubble. He scoffed. ::Cowards and traitors! Is your plan _personal_ , Starscream? Is it to flatter the shuttle by using his research, to woo him back?::

Starscream’s voice twitched, as did his wings, Soundwave imagined. :: _Personally,_ I am hungry.::.

That was precisely the wrong reminder about the ongoing Decepticon failures. A bright purple-white star lit up, and then a bolt of plasma pierced the low clouds. No jets came tumbling down in flames, but Starscream fell silent, while the warlord bellowed,. ::You have learned nothing, Starscream! Autobot lovers will not be tolerated! I have another closet right next to Soundwave’s…::

Megatron kept ranting in the raid comm channel all the way to the human convoy. Soundwave must have tuned him out, he realized when Megatron finally stopped. Had tuned out Megatron - _Lord_ Megatron? Oh, why the Pit not. It didn’t matter, because nothing did.

They fought, Soundwave supposed. He shot at the cabin of a truck, giant by the human standards, then at the guard jeeps resembling Swindle’s alt, and felt nothing whether he hit or missed. He blanked out in low-fuel glitches; one moment the humans were shooting back; the next moment, they weren’t, broken on the ground. One moment he was disabling his non-essential systems, gathering his energy to fly after the Seekers as they disappeared into the clouds, hauling their loot to the biggest volcanic caldera in the hemisphere. An artificial eruption would solve their energy problems with one big raid, or so Megatron claimed. The next moment, Soundwave was taking cover to fire on the Autobots.

The Autobots? That woke Soundwave up. Jazz? No, Jazz wasn’t here this time. Neither were the Aerialbots, nor the shuttle, Starscream’s former colleague from their days at the Academy. Only a few grounders: they must have scrambled from nearby when their human allies had called for help. The Decepticons could simply fly away. They didn’t, because nothing made sense.

Soundwave realized he didn’t have enough energy to power up his integrated shoulder cannon. He made use of a heavy blaster that came with its own power clips. The Autobots transformed and took cover, while Megatron - was he ranting again?

“You are too late. The power of the volcano will be mine!” Megatron took a futile potshot over the head of his Autobot counterpart, and taunted, “Try and stop me, Prime! Or do you not care if a few of your beloved humans fry in lava?” Megatron’s laughter came, labeled ‘sharp’ and ‘dark’; Soundwave’s coding system must be glitching, with tactile and visual data leaking into the sounds. “A few - or a few million?” Megatron laughed once more. “Decepticons, after me!”

Too proud to call a retreat? The Autobots chased on wheel, shooting and yelling. Soundwave engaged his antigrav thrusters, sluggish as the rest of his frame. One moment the Decepticons broke cover; the next, there was Megatron zooming ahead of his flying troops, amidst the dual heavy rain of the Earth’s native solvent from the sky and the Autobots’ plasma bolts from the ground. One moment, the rain-blurred grays of the human road and the greens of the organic growth were floating by under Soundwave, slowly, too slowly, and way too close. Next moment, he saw the twin bright spots, yellow and red, racing him on the muddy wings they sprayed from the puddles. They burst into a synchronous transform-jump, a jet judo trick he knew how to dodge… Too slow. The sky capsized and the ground hurled itself up, to pound Soundwave together with his attackers.

::Soundwave: down,:: he comm-ed the raid channel.

::You traitor! If you dare tell them anything, if I see them show up here, your spawn will sssszwooooozzzzzwooooozzzzzwooooo…::

The unliving symmetry of the comm jammer’s sound-pattern replaced Megatron’s threats. The Decepticons, now small dots in the sky, stayed their course. Rough hands were trying to pin him down. His mouth was overflowing with energon faster than he could swallow.

_Finish it_. He longed to cease to be. The dark, cold wish paralyzed like the stasis cuffs. Then his base programming overrode his despair. Soundwave fought, fought for his clade.

He must have dropped his blaster, but he punched, kicked, and aimed a telepathic assault that, had he had the energy, would have stasis-locked even the sturdiest processor. A mech groaned in pain, a heavy foot kicked Soundwave in the face, and the coded cry, “Don’t knock him out!” flashed on his HUD before it had to reboot.

“Let him up. I will talk to him.” Optimus Prime’s voice pattern; the tone of an order. “Soundwave, please hear me out.”

Arms cuffed behind his back, held by many hands, waiting for the dregs of fuel to power up his next telepathic attack: what choice did Soundwave have? Turn off his speech recognition?

They lifted him from the dirt. “Whoa, the slagger’s cut up like a used punching dummy. I swear, it wasn’t us.”

“Nope, we haven’t the time.”

Soundwave looked up, the Autobot reds and blues of the enemy leader’s armor swimming in his visor. He swayed on his knees, but was kept upright.

_> Symbiont uplinks 1-6 failed. Retry/Wait?_

_> Wait_

Wait, wait, wait until the humans called the Autobots or something else went wrong. Until Megatron inevitably decided that Soundwave talked, and then… He recoiled from the thought. Maybe nothing would go wrong at the caldera, and he’d... He’d… He’d what? As a tech problem, memory extraction had been solved long before Soundwave’s forging. Surely Megatron didn’t believe in the silly soldier legends, didn’t think that the strong-willed mechs could resist hacking?

“Our fliers are on their way,” Optimus Prime confirmed Soundwave’s guess. “We must learn Megatron’s plans, and we will. I invite you to cooperate. The alien genocides might not concern you, yet you must see that Megatron hurts his own people, the Cybertronians, the Decepticons. He will never win, but he will waste precious lives trying to postpone his defeat. Help us, Soundwave, because we can save lives of both factions! What do you say?”

Such eager blue optics. Soundwave had the strangest feeling that the Prime could see through him. Not into his memory banks as a hacker would, but into his despairing spark. Optimus Prime’s ‘because’ was grander than, ‘Resistance is futile, save us time, save yourself pain.’ Implied: a grander offer. Soundwave’s defection.

“Ha, as if he’d listen.”

“Have you thought this through, Prime?”

“Optimus, you can’t be serious!”

The Autobots argued, with no fear of their leader’s wrath.

_Offer: tempting_ \- what? No, no it wasn’t, how could Soundwave think such treason? Besides, he saw what the Autobots were too naive to see. The Prime was only baiting him to save their Earth allies. Once that urgent task was done, the Autobots would pump Soundwave for other intel at their leisure, keep shooting him through his limbs, or worse.

Negative on the Prime’s offer. Then what? Soundwave struggled to focus, to think up a deception. What likely volcano could he name at the other end of the world? Skyfire was space-worthy; it would only take the shuttle-former a few kliks to check. Yet those were a few more kliks Soundwave’s symbionts would not be hurt.

He could tell them he needed access to a mainframe computer to break the encrypted plans, because Megatron wouldn’t transmit the keys until the last possible moment. Too convoluted? Pit, it was hard to think! Would that he could rest for a klik. _Forever_. No, his clade!

Would the Autobots believe the extra step of security, redundant on encrypted comms? If they did, for how long would he be able to fool the mech who’d supervise his computer access - the Autobot strategist Second-in-Command Prowl, or their scientists Wheeljack and Skyfire, or their best hacker, Special Operations Commander Jazz?

Soundwave shuddered, as if the rain turned into liquid nitrogen. His code-mandala rearranged itself, swirling with new shapes, colors, and glyphs: a loud roar of a landing shuttle, Autobots arguing, Optimus Prime urging him that the time was… Soundwave struggled to decipher the shapes as they swirled into a blur, then vanished. He crashed into a deep stasis.

***

Soundwave rebooted fighting - fighting his systems that wanted to slide back into sleep, the magna-bonds pinning every part of him to a hard cool surface, and the jammers that howled on his comm and telepathic frequencies.

“Don’t you mess up what I’ve just fixed!” Loud volume, the tone marked ‘acerbic’, the voice signature of the Autobot Chief Medical Officer Ratchet.

Soundwave’s visor finally rebooted, to show him the ridiculous orange ceiling of the Autobot base. The medic wasn’t wrong; Soundwave stilled his futile struggles.

Brisk movements, light touches; Ratchet pulled an IV out of a fuel line on Soundwave’s neck, put a few instruments into a radiation sterilizer, and left the room. Now what?

_‘Symbiont uplinks 1-6 failed’_ \- yet they were alive. Unhurt, please let them be unhurt - oh, but Megatron would have tortured Soundwave’s clade where Soundwave could sense it. Such a relief to have his reasoning faculties back, sans his frame’s distractions. He wasn’t bleeding out or starving, and his self-tests even claimed local anesthetics had been used.

How brief the respite? The Autobots must still want to lure him to cooperate. If he deceived them for long enough that Megatron finished his foolish mission, Starscream would take care to replace the security codes and anything else obvious that Soundwave’s hacked memory banks could divulge, and then…

“I woke him up as soon as I could. Jazz, you promised.”

“Shouldn’t have to, but yeah. Time, Ratch, time!”

The lovely voice-shape twisted a dagger in Soundwave’s spark. And then he realized what Jazz’s presence must mean, even before the door opened and he saw the saboteur carrying gunmetal-gray boxes atop a bundle of wires.

The respite, over. Optimus Prime’s time limits on his offer to cooperate made tactical sense in the way Megatron’s latest decisions hadn’t.

Jazz didn’t waste a moment: he strode in, and deposited his ominous tools on the edge of Soundwave’s medberth. His EM field was pulled back so tight that Soundwave only teeked its edges, the wisps of anger and nausea.

Faction enemy, Spec Ops rival, personal victim of the worst kind: of course Jazz was holding back a maelstrom of hatred and dark intent.

_Soundwave: wrong._ His spontaneous confession mortified Soundwave, but his telepathy was jammed; the saboteur didn’t hear.

Jazz had come for Soundwave. Pain, horror, and insanity were following in his footsteps. And yet, Soundwave craved an understanding? At least this time around, he had the clarity of mind to see that his hopes were delusional. He remained silent.

As did Jazz. He didn’t threaten, didn’t gloat. That made sense, because he didn’t have to, because they both knew that hacking worked, and it hurt.

Hacks could hurt without limits. Megatron hadn’t allowed data-hacks, because he’d wanted Soundwave’s processor still functional come the next workday. A fake video might deceive a weak mind. Fake data, poured straight up, would deceive even the strongest body. It could flood the sensory net with smelter heat and then stretch the melting agony into joors. Could keep replaying the full experience of a breaking limb on an infinite loop. Could...

Could, and would, wouldn’t it, once Jazz had his raid intel? If he went insane from torture, would Soundwave survive the unbearable fate of his clade? Would the Autobots draw out his punishment long enough for him to witness exactly how Megatron lost the war and wrecked the Decepticon Cause - would a part of Soundwave still understand the ruin?

The silent Jazz grabbed a pick from a tool shelf and pried open the data port panel on Soundwave’s wrist. The brief touch sent a shiver through Soundwave and spilled disgust into the saboteur’s field. Its bitter taste was all too familiar from pretending it wasn’t there every time Soundwave had fondled his captive Jazz. Soundwave choked on the thought.

Jazz, his Jazz - Jazz was _creative_. No doubt he could think up the most perverse and tortuous sexual acts. A piece of code from one of these gray boxes could force Soundwave through his punishment, again and again, without any need to repair his frame in-between. Without any need for Jazz to touch his disgusting prisoner, not that the need to touch had stopped the others.

Jazz pulled a data cord from his wrist, plugged it into a box, and then plugged the box’s cord into Soundwave’s data port. Here it came! Soundwave tried to break his restraints, damn his last shreds of dignity. He fought so hard that his wrist armor bent. He threw the best in his offensive code at the AI in the box, aiming at the saboteur’s systems beyond.

Of course, the magna-bonds had no give, and Jazz’s machine repelled the siege. Soundwave braced himself for the pain, and readied his firewalls, traps, and weapon-grade viruses, waiting for Jazz to make the first move. What would it be? A classic brute force attack, the disruptor pulses frying any protocol that stood in their way? A massive flood of gibberish and paradoxes to overwhelm his processor: death by a myriad tiny wounds? A distracting feint to overstimulate his pain center, or maybe his pleasure hub, the way Soundwave had done telepathically hacking Jazz?

Soundwave had chosen the pleasure feint as the least painful. Back then, he’d thought he’d been sparing Jazz; now he hoped with his entire spark that Jazz would go for the disruptors instead, even though they felt like blaster shots to the head.

A tiny package of data came through the wire and was easily intercepted by Soundwave’s defenses. What? He stared at his interrogator.

Jazz’s blue visor gleamed, turned aside, impenetrable and icy. His lips were pressed into a tight line, his hands were held together as if cuffed, he was absolutely gorgeous - and absolutely silent about the reasons why he’d sent Soundwave’s system a mundane handshake request and a one-klik timer.

Because, once Soundwave was over his surprise, the offer was clear. Soundwave had a klik to cooperate, divulge Megatron’s plan, and open up access to his systems. Once inside, Jazz would verify if Soundwave was telling the truth. Save the Autobots time, save himself pain.

And then what? Respite, protection: implied. Tempting. Preposterous! A single piece of intel, to pay for everything he’d done as the top servant of the tyrant warlord, everything he’d done to Jazz? Were the humans that valuable to the Autobots? Soundwave didn’t believe it. Why wouldn’t Jazz give Soundwave any number of nasty souvenirs, once Soundwave talked? That must be it. That must be the saboteur’s real intent.

He’d have rejected the deceptive offer, even if his symbionts weren’t hostage.

As Soundwave waited for the timer to run out and the pain to begin, he wondered what Jazz would do after. Would he leave to fight by the volcano, or stay and watch his prisoner suffer?

***

_Take it, take it while you can, you stubborn glitch. Open up. Why won’t you take it?_ _Want me to hurt you, do you for real, is that it? Wanna keep me locked in here with you for longer? Take it, you fragger, take..._

Soundwave wasn’t listening. He couldn’t. His telepathic frequency was jammed, and Jazz had locked down his own vocalizer. He didn’t know what he’d do if allowed sounds: rant futile accusations, curse as he shot the tied-up evil in the face, run away screaming? Fail the humans, break his promise to Ratchet, lose his slipping grip on himself? He couldn’t afford to find out.

Of course the deluded fragger wouldn’t listen. Had he listened to a word from Jazz his prisoner? Optimus might want to believe any mech could change, and Jazz might want to believe Optimus, but Soundwave was never going to give up his convictions. No, Jazz wouldn’t be so lucky. He’d have to wade through the sick slag in Soundwave’s memory banks on his way to the intel. What would he find there? A well-curated stash of recordings and fantasies, starring him in Soundwave’s berth? A shrine to Megatron, with crystal-adorned statues and choice quotes in calligraphy? A book draft, _‘Autobots: Inferior. Short Guide to Training Your Pet’_? Jazz could hardly wait.

The timer on his HUD counted down in slow motion, stretching a klik into centuries. Jazz focused on the timer’s glyphs, the antigrav IV stand floating in the corner, and the familiar comfort of the orange ceiling. Anything but Soundwave’s beat-up frame. It supplied the details that Ratched refused to divulge.

Livid, the medic had barked ‘Starvation, torture, the rest is confidential!’ at the inquiring officers. Now, every cut and burn reminded Jazz that his video was complicit - that _he_ was complicit. Past-Jazz approved the symmetric justice. Monster-Jazz couldn’t wait to blast his tormentor with system disruptors, to watch him writhe, to teek his pain. Real-Jazz looked away while he could. He pressed his palms together against the damn tremors, cycling slow vents to settle his roiling tanks. He waited, waited, and waited, for a miracle to come and his prisoner to grow reasonable, for his countdown to finish, or for his fragmenting processor to melt down, whichever came first.

The timer ran out. As though watching a vid where a mech who resembled him acted out an inane script, the detached Jazz started the interrogation scene.


	6. Flatline

_Deplorable cruelty to prisoners stems from tyranny. It’s ideological._

_Once started, cruelty is contagious._

_In response, I don’t want to retaliate, but to reduce cruelty._

_~ The Jazz Report’s Footnote_

 

Jazz caught up to Ratchet and First Aid. Their red and white ambulance frames clashed with the orange corridor. The two were moving at a medics’ fast-but-cautious jog, with an antigrav stretcher between them. Soundwave lay strapped to it, with an energon drip and an external spark pacer hovering over him on tethers.

Their prisoner looked just like Jazz had left him. Soundwave’s hands were restrained in front, the stasis cuffs blocking his shoulder cannon and other transformations. A disruptor device was locked around his arm; Jazz had set it to the too-familiar frequency of Soundwave’s telepathic attacks. The surveillance officer still resembled an old chew toy of that giant organic cat they’d run into on an alien mission, even though Ratchet had fixed the major wounds. Salves and self-repairs would take a while to undo cuts, burns, and the rest of the Decepticons’ handiwork. No, nothing _new_ was visibly wrong with Soundwave, yet he was in stasis.

Soundwave used to be impeccably neat, polishing his blue and white armor to a soft gleam, and forcing his captive to… Jazz averted his glance.

The two medics wouldn’t even say ‘Hi’.

“You called, Ratch. What’s up? What’s with Soundwave?” Jazz finally asked, keeping up with the procession.

“He is dying,” Ratchet said curtly.

“What?!” Jazz stopped with a jolt, then ran up next to Ratchet. “He was fine!”

“Fine?” Ratchet glared at Jazz. The mix of anger and pity made saboteur’s tanks churn.

“Well, not really fine. I blasted him deep with the disruptors, had to, ‘cause he resisted hacking so much. That’s no spa, and on top of all the disgusting slag the ‘Cons have done to him - but dying? He wasn’t dying!”

“I THOUGHT YOU WANTED TO BE PROFESSIONAL ABOUT THIS, _COMMANDER_!” The medic’s sudden bellow made First Aid jump and hit the wall with a bang, though he managed not to disturb the stretcher. “He’s my patient, even if we must keep him in the brig! I’ve only released him to you to save the humans! You’ve said your hacks won’t give him more than a bad headache, that you’d be _careful_!”

“I was,” Jazz objected. He had been. Fraggit, he had been! “Ya break firewalls like the officers got, it’s harsh - I know, he’s broken mine.” While forcing pleasure, ostensibly to distract. The medics knew his… medical history. “Harsh, but never lethal. What happened?”

“Pain shock,” Ratchet said icily. “On top of spark and neural net feedback loop from too-fast overloads. Cascading system failure.”

“Slaggin’ Pit, what?!” No, no, please no, not the Autobots! Fighting his nausea, Jazz made himself look at Soundwave’s crotch. The covers were in place, but there were telltale dried-up silvery marks around. “Ratchet, please! First Aid?” The little Protectobot kept his visor to the front. He’d had very hard time with the Spec Ops in general, and the recent Jazz-Soundwave nightmares in particular. Jazz pleaded, “Ratchet, I haven’t touched him, not like this! I’d never!”

“I know you haven’t _touched_ Soundwave. Nobody has _touched_ him, there are no marks. You’ve got your data, ran out to hop into Skyfire for the raid, called me in. He hasn’t been hurt then. Nice alibi!” Ratchet only huffed at saboteur’s indignant ‘No!’ and then continued, “I called Ironhide to escort Soundwave to the brig, and told him to warn the guards that Soundwave needs rest after repairs and hacks. The twins called me in, about two joors later. They swear they haven’t touched Soundwave either, not until he flatlined. They say he glitched.”

“Ya think I’ve planted somethin’ nasty in his processor?” Jazz demanded. He hated to admit it, but that was the most logical assumption from what Ratchet knew: a hack, then a mysterious non-physical illness.

“I should have known it would be too much for you, Jazz.” Ratchet’s voice turned quiet and bitter. He’d always been quick to blame himself. “I’ve seen mechs slip up, good mechs like you. You seemed healthy enough, you had best intentions, but then you had to be right next to Soundwave, and everything came rushing back, didn’t it? So you acted as if he was still hurting you.” Ratchet glanced at Jazz, saw him shaking his head, and exploded in yells again, “Still won’t admit it? Your Special Operations have often toed the line, and now you’ve crossed way beyond! That’s because I shouldn’t have released you for duty yet! In fact, I’ll…” Ratchet interrupted his threat, probably a mandatory vorn-long medical leave, to punch in the code for the medbay doors, then to rush for the life support machines.

There was no convincing Ratchet without more facts. “Do yer best,” Jazz called into the medbay, earning another huff. Of course Ratchet would. “I’m gonna find out…”

He comm-ed ahead, then ran for Red Alert’s nest of surveillance monitors. Ironhide and the twins: bad. Hiding from Ratchet what they had done: worse. Jazz forced himself to enter the room slowly and to look neutral, so he wouldn’t have to explain too much to their hair-trigger security officer. Jazz requested the recordings from the brig security cameras, kept his face stony under Red Alert’s stare, took the data chip back to his quarters, locked the door, and brought up video, sound, and EM feeds on his console. The recording started in the empty brig - no prisoners, no guards. And then, Ironhide’s gruff voice was heard.

“Stop huggin’ our walls. We don’t need yer disgusting paint transfers on them. Ya think if you stumble I’ll feel sorry and come close enough for ya to grab my blaster? I’m an Autobot, not an idiot. That’s the oldest trick, ‘Con!”

There was no answer. Soundwave appeared on camera first. Slowly, he turned the corner. He kept next to the wall, and wavered a little after each step as if his gyros were out of whack. When his balancing act failed after another step, he caught himself on the wall with one shoulder and cuffed hands.

Ironhide strode into the camera view, his heavy red frame looming in the narrow corridor. He kept out of reach of Soundwave, kept his blaster ready, and glared worth a plasma bolt. “Into the cell with ya.”

Soundwave shuddered, and obeyed.

Ironhide said into the comm, his tone still sarcastic, but much friendlier. “Sideswipe? Get here with yer bro, on the double. Guard duty for our favorite Decepticon. Oh, and the doc says the slagger needs his beauty recharge. ‘Cause bein’ a damn rapist must be tirin’.”

Jazz jumped up from his chair. His vents caught and his spark pulsed in a frantic flare. For a dizzy moment, that was _him_ struggling to move through the enemy corridors, hurt and weak in front of a blaster muzzle. Wincing as if struck by the jeers of his warden.

And then the world lurched and toppled upside-down. He was the righteous guard, disgusted with the nastiest war criminal who deserved every misfortune coming his way.

Ratchet was right about one thing. Shackles, taunts, guns, a weakened frame... Soundwave. Each image, a data point. Each piece of data, a ping to nightmares locked away in Jazz’s memory banks. Sick slag done to captive-Jazz, mirrored in the dark dreams of monster-Jazz itching to strike at the ‘Cons.

The single footnote in Jazz’s report? His Spec Ops team followed it, followed their leader. The hardliner Ironhide thought it a temporary weakness of a hurt soldier. No matter how gruff, Ratchet was a supporter, always opposed to cruelty, even toward their enemies. And Jazz himself?

No, the footnote wasn’t a lie. Neither was it Jazz’s honest reality; it was a hope and a dream. Was he a fool to hope his little interventions would add up to a real change?

Jazz reset his optics, took several deep vents, and clasped his hands together. He focused on the sensors in his fingers and palms, the simple steady input of the touch. He was him, here and now, on neither side of this cruelty. He’d stayed polite and distant (if icy and dissociated) through the interrogation; he’d minimized Soundwave’s discomfort the best he could; his raid had been a success; he would untangle this mess next.

_Unless Soundwave dies_ , Jazz thought. _Can’t unfrag that._

He stepped on his urge to comm the medbay for news, and sat back by the console. On the screen, Soundwave was lying prone on the berth in his cell, awkwardly hunched over his shackled hands. A pitiful sight, as if he fell and couldn’t move. Ironhide must have activated the energon bars while Jazz had had his dizzy moment, and now was greeting Sunstreaker and Sideswipe by the brig’s door.

The three Autobots stood together, a bright group of two cheerful-reds and one sunny-yellow. The twins stared at Ironhide, nodded, and exchanged glances, then identical grins at whatever he sent them by comm.

Sunstreaker turned to the occupied cell and said in a loud, slow, mock-sweet voice: “Hello, Soundwave!”

Soundwave winced, then was still. Jazz tilted his head at his screen. How bizarre, for the famously stoic mech.

“Hi, Soundwave!” Sideswipe cried, his hands by his mouth

The surveillance officer winced once more, then slowly turned over and propped his head up on the wall, his visor now turned toward his guards, who still had the animated faces of mechs in a comm conversation.

When Ironhide yelled, “Bye, Soundwave, have a good rest!” the prisoner didn’t wince.

Jazz had hoped he’d never again have to watch this mech’s tiny tells, like he had while shackled to Soundwave’s berth, trying to guess the moment when the Decepticon turned from his console and… Jazz slapped a hasty block over that flashback, and focused on the screen.

It took neither the intimate knowledge of Soundwave’s body language nor the special observation skills of a saboteur to notice that Soundwave was barely enduring: his fists clenched, limbs trembling against the locked hydraulics, and EM readings flaring out of control.

He hadn’t been wincing from the humiliation earlier, he... Jazz paused the playback and called the medbay, tagging the signal with # _MedicalData_ to make sure Ratchet accepted. The video feed came on: Ratchet leaning over Soundwave’s chest, over the pale unsteady light from the exposed the spark casing. He wielded a blinking, multi-pronged, pointy tool that made Jazz shiver.

Yet medical procedures meant that hope remained. Hope for what? More messy disasters, more temptations for the Autobots to be cruel, more ways for Jazz to fail as an officer?

There was no time to ponder: Ratchet raised his horror implement and faced the comm console with a scowl. “What?” he said.

“When Soundwave wakes up” - if? The little word cut - “make sure ya real quiet. Sounds hurt him.”

“Sounds? Simply sounds?”

Jazz nodded.

“Nice hack, _commander_. Why tell me now? Remorse?”

“Ratchet, for the last time, I didn’t slip! I failed to stop this, but not on purpose! Maybe I broke somethin’ by accident hackin’ him.”

“By accident,” Ratchet murmured, doubt replacing hostility.

“Slaggit, hacks are never gonna be safe, no matter if yer careful, and I had to be fast! Soundwave’s systems are weird, like nothing I’ve seen before. Look for sensory net glitches. Ironhide noticed, and told the twins, and they’ve used it - whatever it is.”

“Why haven’t they told me?” Ratchet bellowed.

“Frag if I know! Scared? I’m watchin’ them on the brig surveillance!” Jazz realized he was yelling too, took a deep vent, and lowered his voice to a whisper. “Ratch, we’ll hafta do somethin’. More than I’ve been doin’, that’s for sure. Can’t have ‘Bots torturin’ prisoners. I know mechs are still angry, but…”

“Later, Jazz,” the medic said, still gruff, but not in his Hatchet-mode anymore. “I need to work. For better or for worse, Soundwave will make it.”

Phew. Jazz won’t be complicit in murder, even if his fake documentary must have triggered Soundwave’s punishment, and his hack had somehow led to a nasty torture. He forced himself to return to the recording. Oh, he could guess what had happened in the brig next, but he owed it to bear witness.

Ironhide left. Sideswipe called Sunstreaker to the console, where they brought up the same surveillance stream that Jazz was watching now. Reckless, or sure the others would approve?

Sunstreaker pointed at the inset with the EM waveforms, and for a while, the two kept making Soundwave’s field flare up as much as they could. They were facing away from him, so Soundwave couldn’t see their lips move and be warned of the next insult or catcall they tried.

Soundwave either gave up hiding his reactions or lost control of his frame. He curled up, knees by his chest, face tucked into cuffed hands. He twitched and shuddered with every sound.

Sideswipe plugged his wrist cable into the console, and its sound system played music. Jazz had often heard the twins playing this piece while sparring: a catchy upbeat rhythm with bright harmonics. It matched their flair, their fighting style.

Soundwave went rigid. His EM readings were in a wild chaos, waves too short and then too long, too fast and then too slow. Jazz shuddered too, from the second-hand electric torture that must have caused in Soundwave’s spark and neural net. When the music ended, Jazz heard moans of pain. Soundwave must have heard himself too, because the sound abruptly stopped.

Primus below! Soundwave, crying out?

Jazz fast-forwarded through more of the same: Soundwave writhing in pain, the twins looking slightly guilty but egging one another on. Until something changed. The twins happened onto a piece of music that caused a different EM response: a resonance that made waves crest beyond the monitor’s limits before they flatlined for a moment: a quick, brutal overload. Soundwave cried out in agony, then twisted and arched so violently he fell off the berth.

Jazz retched and covered his mouth with his hands. Had Red Alert watched that on surveillance and done nothing? Or had he turned the blind eye?

Sunstreaker looked amused, Sideswipe disgusted; they exchanged glances, and probably comm text or spark-bond signals. Sideswipe nodded and broadcast the same song again.

And again. And again.

Soundwave never got up from the floor. The twins didn’t even gloat anymore, as if they forgot why they were doing all this, forgot their revenge, and played Soundwave as a computer game with points for strong reactions.

Soundwave didn’t plead with them to stop.

Not even when his EM readings became critically dangerous. The twins had been unlikely to know how to interpret that data, but Jazz saw the impending shock-crash in the graphs. Soundwave must have felt it coming, must have seen urgent warnings on his HUD...

‘ _Say somethin’, you stubborn slagger!_ ’ Jazz wanted to yell at Soundwave on the screen, even though he knew how this had ended.

Soundwave was too rational for curses, for empty threats or futile begging. He wouldn’t let his clade die just to refuse the enemies their satisfaction. He could have told them he was dangerously hurt; it stood to reason they’d stop short of murder!

Why hadn’t he?

Maybe he was too out of it to think and talk. The twins had never asked any questions or made other demands Soundwave could have met to make his ordeal stop. Maybe he’d believed they wouldn’t quit. Maybe he’d expected them to kill him. Or even - had wanted to?

Another piece of leaden dread dropped on top of Jazz’s heavy spark. What sort of mental anguish would drive a mech to - to _this_ , as his escape from the world?

Jazz hadn’t seen death-wishes while inside Soundwave’s systems, though he could have missed them in the carrier’s bizarre… Wait. That didn’t make any sense. The carrier! Carriers couldn’t be suicidal: that went against their fundamental coding! Jazz had learned the details as the designated guardian for Blaster’s clade, should something happen to his friend. When a carrier died, the broken bond sent an explosive shock. If the symbionts didn’t outright offline from that injury and anguish, they had to be sedated or on suicide watch for decaorns. The only reason for a carrier to seek death would be…

Jazz comm-ed Ratchet once more. “If Soundwave wakes up, tell him I’m on his symbionts’ case.” In response to Ratchet’s double-take, Jazz added, “I’ll explain later. Out.”

He comm-ed Mirage next and, while the spy was gathering the supplies, watched the end of the recording. Soundwave flatlined one too many times and stayed that way. Twins’ amusement turned into alarm. Sideswipe called Ratchet while Sunstreaker, cursing up a storm, unlocked the cell and plugged his cable into Soundwave’s neck port to jump-start his systems.

A part of Jazz wanted to let it slide, to leave his tormentor to whatever fate unfolded, to sink to the rock bottom and stay there. _Rest: later_ , another part of him pleaded, in Soundwave’s monotone. If he’d read the clues right, Jazz could take the wish from his footnote way beyond feeble reprimands to wayward Autobots. A dream began to form into a plan.

If he’d read the clues right, he had very little time. If he was wrong, the truth would have to wait till Soundwave recuperated. Meanwhile, Jazz had a disgusting report to send to Optimus Prime, then six little enemies to extract.

There was a ping at his door. Mirage was ready. The report would have to wait.


	7. Shoot Me

“D’ya notice how their brig’s one of the easiest places on the base to infiltrate?” Jazz asked Mirage. He didn’t lower his voice: their sounds, EM, and other waves that could have betrayed their presence were blanketed from the snoopers by Mirage’s electric disruptor.

“When the brig is predominantly imprisoning the Decepticons, it is not guarded as well against outside incursions,” Mirage pointed out. The former noble’s formal speech flowed smoothly in a casual exchange, and his elegant white-blue frame looked relaxed, reclining in the narrow vent as if on a soft settee.

Through the big breach in the hull, into a half-submerged closet, and then up into the air vents. Always the air vents! Jazz had been crawling through them on one of his escape attempts, shackled and near-blind, his interface panel cover stolen, and…

His hands trembled; he took a deep breath to still them. Jazz wasn’t ready for infiltration missions yet and he knew it. But who to trust? His recording had been leaked to the Decepticons. When it came to Soundwave, someone - possibly, everyone - thought Jazz’s judgment unreliable. Hostage syndrome, trauma, secret wishes for revenge: whatever the Autobots thought was fragging him up. He couldn’t trust anyone to obey his order without second-guessing.

No matter what Jazz told them about his plan, about Megatron’s folly giving the Autobots their big chance in the war, they’d think he was doing this for Soundwave, _personally_. Out of malice or attraction, it didn’t matter. And some of the Autobots thought that, personally, Soundwave only deserved death.

It didn’t matter that Optimus had made Soundwave an offer earlier. They didn’t have the urgent need anymore.

Mirage? Mirage was complicated. He’d wanted to shoot the Decepticon officer dead when he’d first found Jazz in Soundwave’s quarters, shackled hand and foot to the wall, with his visor, audios, and interface cover missing. Yet even then, he had obeyed Jazz’s unorthodox orders to the letter, helping him to stage a blackmail video and then leaving Soundwave and their hostage Laserbeak unharmed.

Yet Mirage was one of those who could have leaked the video later, and - no! If Jazz wanted this done, he had to be here to see it done.

Except the brig was empty. As Jazz suspected it would be, but they had to check the easy place before the risky ones.

“When I was sliced into Soundwave’s system, he pictured them still in the brig,” Jazz said. “It was creepy. Every two kliks, wham, that urgent error message on top of everything: _Symbiont uplinks 1-6 failed. Retry/Wait?_ Soundwave’s field bounced every time, like he touched a live wire. The ‘Cons have rigged a cell to block the bond.”

“Must be this one in the corner,” Mirage pointed at the coppery open door.

“Yep, that’s the image I’ve fished out from his processor,” Jazz confirmed. All the cell doors were open, the cells empty, and the corridor guard gone.

“If the symbionts are hostages and Megatron thinks Soundwave is talking, they are likely to be executed,” Mirage summarized, tone mild.

“Aye. Megatron musta figured out we got the volcano’s location from Soundwave. Except he shoulda also figured out we’d hack Soundwave if he resists. The old buckethead must be losin’ it. The way the ‘Cons have been treatin’ Soundwave, they’ll draw this out, too.” Jazz cycled his vents in a heavy sigh. “We will check the interrogation room next,” he ordered. As they began to crawl through the vents, he muttered, “The ‘Con slaggers musta started hurtin’ Soundwave’s mechlings while the ‘Bot slaggers were hurtin’ Soundwave. That’s when he got his death wish.”

“Are you fit to go there, sir?” Mirage inquired, and paused.

Jazz ran a self-diagnostic, then nodded. Mirage resumed crawling.

Jazz did feel fit for duty. Alert, poised, expecting the unexpected. He was fine, until he wasn’t. Until he shot Vortex.

One moment, Jazz was crouching over a grill. He watched the interrogator fix electrodes to the spread-shackled Ravage, to his front left and hind right paws. He noted details with a cold detachment: Vortex’s rotary blades were trembling; the cat-former’s red optics glared, but he stayed silent and still; the current would pass through the whole little black frame for the maximum effect…

In the next moment, Jazz felt slightly dizzy - and then he was writhing on the floor, shackled, Vortex tightening thumbscrews as he molested Jazz’s valve. That dizziness again; the hallucination was gone, and Jazz was in the interrogation room, smoking blaster in hand, Vortex twitching on the floor with a hole melted through his chest.

The alarm kept blaring, probably through the whole base.

Before Jazz had a chance to shake off his processor fog, the door opened. Jazz rolled behind a vertical restraint stand and aimed at the doorway. ::Run, Mirage! I will delay them,:: he comm-ed.

Instead of a dozen Decepticon soldiers, in sauntered one red, white, and pretty flight frame.

Starscream.

Alone. Unarmed.

“Took you long enough!” he screeched, casting a brief glance at Vortex’s stilled body, and then, “Shoot me through my leg and take this.”

Jazz stared at the Air Commander, who was standing very still by the now-closed and locked door, and at the data chip in his outstretched hand. “What - what didya say?”

“You heard me, Autobot. Shoot me, take this, take the symbionts to Soundwave, and _run already_.” Starscream’s wings twitched, as he visibly fought not to make any abrupt movements lest he be shot somewhere entirely unasked-for.

“What do ya mean, ‘take the symbionts’?” Frenzy’s weak protest came from the corner where the five small tied-up mechs were huddling together on the floor - just as Jazz asked, “How did you know we would come?”

Starscream waved an airy hand. “I refuse to live in a world where you wouldn’t. Come on! My diversion won’t delay the guards for long. Oh, and if they capture you with this chip, I am dead.” He smirked, he actually smirked.

“Your div…” Jazz stuttered.

Mirage dropped out of the air vent and walked to the slab were Ravage lay stretched. “Will you come quietly?” he asked the barely-conscious symbiont, and turned to the corner, facing the rest. “All of you. We will take you to Soundwave.”

Ravage gave a feeble growl, and Frenzy said, “Like slag we will! The ‘Bots have tortured the boss almost to death, in pervy ways, and it’s all Jazz’s fault!”

Starscream’s smirk slipped at the revelation. He didn’t move, still held at gunpoint. Was he comm-ing for the reinforcements?

Mirage readied the small electroshock device he’d brought to knock out the symbionts, but turned to Jazz for orders. Forced stasis was dangerous for the already-damaged, small frames.

Jazz lifted his finger for Mirage to wait, and half-turned toward the tiny gray-red mech, the only symbiont talking. “Frenzy, that… Wasn’t me, wasn’t on my watch, and won’t happen anymore,” he promised. “I will not allow it. Soundwave is at the medbay, and Ratchet tells me he will live. Check yer bond.”

Frenzy fell silent, and Starscream nodded, looking smug again. “If the Autobots hadn’t captured Soundwave, he’d have been dead in a few days! You lot will die if you stay here, you little idiots! The Autobots wouldn’t be here if they didn’t want to help.”

“Help? The slaggers want us hostage, the same as Megatron!” Frenzy insisted.

His twin, identical but gray-blue and more beat up, lifted his head to nod.

Starscream huffed. “What’s your point? They are taking you whether you cooperate or not. They want you and Soundwave alive, or they wouldn’t repair him. Given where you are,” he nodded at the wheeled table with torture tools, “the Autobots count as help. The Autobots - or is this your own private venture, Jazz?”

Perceptive fragger! The saboteur wasn’t going to discuss his plans with Starscream. Not yet.

Jazz peered into Starscream’s too-understanding red optics, but the Seeker remained silent. The three officers waited.

The symbionts must have talked over their spark bonds, then, “Let’s fraggin’ go already, Jazz!” Rumble wheezed out. He coughed, and wiped energon from his mouth, struggling to lift the shackles that were too heavy for his size.

Frenzy nodded his agreement with his twin, and Ravage grumbled in the affirmative. The three fliers weren’t stirring.

Jazz unfroze, came closer to Starscream, and took the data chip, his gun still trained on the Seeker’s spark. He stepped to the side to keep aiming, and checked on his companion. Mirage had already detached Ravage, and was swiftly, carefully collecting the little wounded mechs into a blanket-lined sack that he’d brought for the purpose.

“Which leg, Starscream?” Jazz asked, still out of it.

“Oh my slagging Primus on a stick! Right leg, and go, go, GO!” Starscream yelled.

“Ya got the surveillance covered?”

“Yes, of course, not hard with Soundwave away, is it? FIRE!”

Jazz followed the order - the order _from Starscream_. He turned his back on the incredibly loud Seeker bleeding all over the floor, and fired again, melting the door lock shut.

Mirage was already shimmering out of sight up in the vent, his disruptor field activated. Jazz followed him there.

Soon, they were out of the Decepticon base.


	8. Pivot

Jazz and Mirage checked on their little prisoners as soon as they were out of the immediate danger of the chase. The symbionts had stayed very quiet, as they had promised, cushioned by the blankets in the sack Mirage carried. Jazz had told them his comm in case any of them needed urgent first aid. They hadn’t called. The fliers were still out cold in stasis, and Rumble was unconscious as well, blanket by his mouth soaked in energon.

“Do ya know what’s wrong with yer twin?” Jazz asked.

“Do I look like a medic?” Frenzy snapped, but then whispered, cringing, “I only know it’s somethin’ with his fuel tank. Megatron threw him at a bulkhead, ‘cause Rumble punched him.”

“Ratchet and Blaster will help yer brother,” Jazz said, hoping they could. “Soundwave is still…”

“In stasis, I know,” Frenzy sighed. “He’s been blocking us earlier, but we felt some of it. The frag you ‘Bots did to him?”

“As an unintended side effect of the standard interrogation, Soundwave experienced a sensory net glitch that some mechs later exploited,” Mirage covered for the stammering Jazz. “He is quite safe at the medical bay. Let us go there too.”

Jazz had shared no details with Ratchet when they’d left; he’d had his long-range comms off for the mission, of course, but he turned them on when close enough to home. He winced from the long queue of repeated orders from Prowl to turn back, worried queries if he was okay, an anon using a console to wish him happy defecting (that, he hoped, was a poor joke), and a polite request for the full debriefing from Optimus Prime.

Their return to the Ark was a pandemonium. They went straight for the medbay, where Ratchet yelled at them for transporting wounded mechs wrong, and demanded Jazz broke all the symbionts’ restraints, “Right! This! Moment!” - punctuated by loud bangs of his favorite heavy wrench on a medberth.

At the same time Red Alert, who’d followed them there, was sparking out of his antennae in near-hysterics and also yelling - for the little spy menaces to be restrained more securely and taken to the brig, “Now, Jazz, this nanoklik!”

The black-and-white phantom of the overdue reports that was Prowl loomed in the background.

Their temporary truce fulfilled, the little Decepticon prisoners became unruly. Frenzy cursed up a storm, demanding to see Soundwave, Ravage growled, and the two awoken fliers shrieked threats in their binary speech, fighting the stasis-restraints clipped to their wings.

First Aid stood in the corner with his hands over his audios, Blaster hugging him and slowly stroking his back.

They compromised. Jazz jimmied Rumble’s hand and foot cuffs and took them off, while Ratchet was hooking the symbiont up to life support and muttering to himself about sparkless ceiling-fan-reject interrogators, clueless Spec Ops, and Primus-fragged wars. Buzzsaw was next; First Aid scanned him, and announced the yellow bird-former would wake up as soon as several burned-out circuits were replaced. Jazz kept only one stasis clip loosely locked on the symbiont’s wing to prevent him from activating his wing-mounted blasters once First Aid finished the repairs.

Ravage, still too weak to lift a paw, was given a single mech-size stasis cuff around his waist, blocking his integrated rocket launchers (he’d growled at Jazz’s first attempt to use the cuff as a collar). Blaster took the cat-former into his arms. Ravage bristled at first, then relaxed in skilled hands that didn’t hurt him. First Aid told him to sip his energon and to wait till his electricity-disrupted motor control reset itself.

The medic’s scans revealed that the other three symbionts also didn’t require anything beyond salves, self-repairs, extra fuel, and rest; Jazz gave them med-grade to drink, and then carried them to Soundwave’s berth in the next room, Frenzy in light handcuffs, Laserbeak and Ratbat in wing clips. They snuggled to Soundwave’s unmoving frame where Jazz put them by his side, and lay still. Jazz assigned the reliable Mirage to guard them, and then followed Red Alert to the meeting room where Optimus, Ironhide, and Prowl had already convened.

Someone had left a cube of high-grade by the seat reserved for Jazz. “Thanks,” he muttered to the room in general, sat down, and took a slow draught, the pink shimmer a balm for his frayed nerves.

“Please report on today’s events,” said Optimus Prime evenly.

“Right,” Jazz nodded. “I’ll skip what ya know - we’ve fought, won, caught Soundwave. He resisted, quite desperately, but very poorly. Looked drunk. Only, Ratch said it was the opposite - low on fuel. Our medic doesn’t disclose patient details that aren’t already public, not even for the ‘Con prisoners, but he was real mad after that exam. Still, we needed the intel, so I promised Ratchet I’d be careful, and then I hacked Soundwave.”

Several mechs stirred at the formidable word. The unauthorized data access was their race’s shared dread.

Jazz cycled a vent, staring down into his energon. “I hate that part, it’s - it’s an intrusion, a _personal_ intrusion. Soundwave fought me every micron of the way, inside,” Jazz tapped his finger on his forehead. “Hackin’ a mech is ugly, even if ya don’t mind bein’ in the same room.” He dimmed his visor; it didn’t help. Soundwave’s name conjured the jumbled nightmares of Jazz held helpless against pain, fear, and unwelcome urges.

Jazz’s voice trembled when he continued; he hated that too. “Yes, hackin’s ugly, and then I saw sick slag. The ‘Cons have been torturin’ Soundwave for more than two decaorns. It’s all over his recent memories, it’s…” Jazz shook his head. “That vid I made to keep him away from me? Someone leaked it to them. Nothing about the vid was in my general report.” Jazz looked around the room. “Only the mechs present here, and Ratchet, got the officer version with the file. Mirage also knew about it, because he was the one to rescue me. I learned about the leak yesterday, when Vortex quoted the vid at me. _Someone_ decided for themselves it would be a good idea to share that file with the ‘Cons. I saw Soundwave at yesterday’s raid, and assumed Megatron didn’t believe the vid, or doled out a lesser punishment. I assumed wrong.”

Jazz locked his fingers together, pushed them at one another, cracked his knuckles, and regained control. His voice was flat when he continued, “I’ll write up the gory details in my next report, but essentially, Megs invited the whole army to hurt Soundwave, and they have been. Soundwave was hopin’ for a pardon two days ago. Instead, Megatron made it worse and,” Jazz paused, but they had to hear. Whoever leaked that vid, had to hear, “they were encouraged to rape him, which quite a few did.”

There was a stunned silence.

“You’d think Megatron would shoot the fragger.” Ironhide looked as nauseous as Jazz felt.

“You’d think officers would mind my field reports!” Jazz snapped.

“You have learned these details from hacking Soundwave. That data was not urgent, so you postponed reporting it until you had more time to cope.” Prowl explained, not asked: a high-probability conclusion from his integrated tactical computer.

Jazz nodded his agreement, and bowed deeper for his thanks.

The Second-in-Command paused, as if retrieving data. “In the raids, Soundwave was neither under guard nor restrained. Yet he couldn’t simply run away, because Megatron threatened his symbionts.”

Ironhide exclaimed, “Whoa!” with an impressed look at Prowl.

Jazz confirmed, “They didn’t need to restrain him. Not even for torture, I saw glimpses of that when I hacked him. He just stood there… Or lay there, as it were, and took everythin’.” Jazz cycled a deep vent. “Two reasons, I gather. One, Soundwave’s a true loyalist, ready to suffer for the Decepticon cause. Two, as Prowl said, Megatron kept Soundwave’s symbionts hostage.”

“Three, Soundwave likes pain,” Ironhide muttered.

Jazz stared, speechless other than a flat, “No.”

“How did that hostage situation play out when we captured Soundwave?” Optimus Prime asked, his voice grave.

That, Jazz answered. “Soundwave must’ve had some hope left that Megs would know better. That he’d be rational enough to understand we _would_ hack a prisoner for urgent intel, that Soundwave was helpless to stop it, no matter what Megatron threatened. I didn’t get it: Soundwave knew he couldn’t win or delay me long enough to stop our raid. Why struggle and make the hack hurt worse? Now I see. He did have some hope, but mostly, despair. Every nanoklik he delayed our raid, he was delayin’ his symbionts’ torture. When I broke his firewalls… And he got the most peculiar firewalls. I’ve never seen anythin’ close.”

“Naturally,” Prowl commented.

“When I finally reached his data, I had to poke around his recent memories before I found what I needed. His memory banks are also peculiar, naturally,” Jazz nodded at Prowl. “So I saw - well, sick slag. Soundwave’s a devoted mech, even under his nasty punishment. Still, he saw that Megatron was losin’ his mind and wreckin’ his cause. Soundwave couldn’t deny Megatron’s madness; _he_ isn’t insane. Only desperate.”

Jazz was not going to tell them about the mess he found in Soundwave’s thoughts, as related to himself. Pet-lover-enemy-hope-betrayer. Jazz pushed the data deep down his memory banks, next to his own mix of terror, disgust, and unmentionable, unwanted urges.

“Once we knew Megs was at Yellowstone, well. Human tech ain’t sturdy. One shot at the drill, and we’d be home in a couple of kliks.” Jazz cycled a vent. “But we stayed, so the ‘Cons wouldn’t rage on the humans. Meanwhile, breakin’ Soundwave’s firewalls had a side effect. He became extremely sensitive to sound.” Jazz kept his gaze down, refusing to meet Ironhide’s stare. “I - I didn’t _talk_ to him while I hacked him, so I didn’t notice. I watched the security cams later. Ironhide must have noticed the glitch, and must have told Sideswipe and Sunstreaker. They used that glitch to torture Soundwave until his system crashed and he almost died. It was on camera.”

The saboteur glanced at Red Alert, who didn’t meet his optics. Jazz continued, “What the Decepticons have done to him didn’t surprise me, but the Autobots? Really? Ratchet blamed me, as soon as I was back from the mission. I blame myself too - shoulda been there to stop them… Shoulda asked Optimus, done somethin’.” Jazz sighed heavily. “ _Soundwave_ didn’t try to stop them. Carriers don’t kill themselves, they can’t. He’s been given a loophole horrific enough to bend his base codin’, to let others kill him. As soon as I realized what that must mean, I went to get his mechlings. I thought Megatron would take his time.” Jazz finally looked Ironhide in the optics. “While the twins were having their fun raping Soundwave to near-death, Megatron had Vortex draw out his symbionts’ execution. Think on how that must have felt through the carrier bond.”

Red Alert, the only bonded mech in the room, clasped his hands over his spark. Prowl’s engine gave an angry rev. Jazz lowered his gaze, grabbed the forgotten high-grade with both shaking hands, and downed half the cube in one go.

Ironhide pushed his chair back from the table and stood up. “Too far. I resign and request a tribunal for my role.” Then he muttered, ever stubborn, “Whatever the sick fragger deserves for what he’s done to Jazz.”

Everybody but Jazz spoke at once. The Prime boomed, “Deserved? The Autobots should neither commit nor condone cruelties of that nature!”

Prowl said, voice flat, a statement of fact, “Every officer is complicit.”

Red Alert pushed, “Jazz, you’ve been telling us a lot about Soundwave. I understand he is important to you personally” - _here came the accusations_. “Still, that better have some strategic significance. Missions to the Decepticon base must be approved by more than one officer! You risked Mirage’s life to help your, your…”

Prowl, who up to now had the detached look of running a massive data analysis, glanced at the incensed Jazz, and interrupted. “Please focus. We must discuss strategy.” The room quieted at that. “By my estimates, Soundwave’s demise may be a pivotal point in the war. The primary consequences are three-fold. One, it will severely weaken Decepticons’ spying capabilities; two, it will disrupt the inner surveillance keeping the Decepticon army in order; three, it will upset the power balance in the Decepticon command between Starscream, Soundwave, and Shockwave. The synergic effect of the three consequences together will give us a chance at a decisive victory.”

Victory? Ironhide was disgusted enough to tender his (unlikely) resignation, but only because ‘facing was involved. Prowl was right: all of them were complicit. What Autobot cruelties would ensue as soon as the Decepticons stopped resisting?

The thoughts left Jazz exhausted. “Thank you, Prowler,” he said, then turned to Red Alert. “You may be sayin’, fine, all that still applies if we let Soundwave die or rot in the brig. ‘Cept he’s a security hazard; we’d be complicit in the ‘Cons torturin’ his brats to death, and,” Jazz caught every mech’s gaze in turn, “rescuing them may pivot us” - a nod to Prowl - “toward something better than a chance at victory.”

“What can be better than the Autobot victory?” Red Alert’s voice was full of suspicion.

“A chance at peace.”

“Explain,” Optimus Prime said, more a plea than an order.

“Megatron,” said Jazz simply. “He’s the fourth, but rather major consequence, dontcha think? Believin’ Soundwave a traitor musta cracked somethin’ in that bucket-head. He’s destroyin’ the morale of his army with Soundwave’s disgustin’ punishment. He drove the mech himself to where I believe I can turn him to help our war effort - yes, that’s where I was goin’ with the symbionts. Things are slidin’. Check this out: Megatron has finally pushed Starscream past all these cute half-afted attempts on his life, into a serious mutiny. Mirage and I met Starscream at the Decepticon base. He helped us escape, and he gave me this.” Jazz took the data chip out of his subspace and tossed it onto the table.

“Please continue,” the Prime urged, while Ironhide yelled, “What?” Prowl’s hands twitched, but he didn’t grab the data. Red Alert sputtered, sparks flying off his antennae, “Fraternizing with Starscream too, Jazz?”

“Fraternizing,” the saboteur drawled, with a past-Jazz smirk at Red Alert. “Ooh yeah. Mirage was there for the hot action. He can tell you how I made the air commander writhe and scream.”


	9. Awake

Symbiont sparks: close.

Improbable. Was Soundwave’s clade dead, their sparks united in the Well?

Soundwave didn’t keep up with the research, only its technical applications. But he’d been exposed to secondhand science in his surveillance data, when his target happened to be Starscream. Recently, the newly vicious Megatron had demanded that his latest superweapon ‘killed the accused Autobots so dead their sparks wouldn’t reach the Well’. On the screen of the interstellar comm, the low-resolution, staticky Shockwave had explained ‘the absolute theoretical impossibility’. Starscream had screeched against ‘the useless crazy atrocity’. Starscream, the one at hand planetside, had been slapped; both had been yelled at and ordered to the task.

In their consecutive spied-on private debate, Shockwave had described his model of the Well of Allspark: akin to a spark prison, each spark isolated in a cold storage. Starscream, always contrary, had scoffed, dabbing his still-bleeding lip with a cloth, “No, no, where is your sense of grandeur? Each spark bonds with Primus in unspeakable bliss, until - ah, that’s a good phrase! - until all are one!”

Soundwave recalled some details from the next joor of their arguments: the living mechs’ quantum entanglements with the Well stream spark data from anywhere in the universe; the same quantum bond teleports the sparks to the Well at the moment of death, ready to be reincarnated as the new mechs; the Well scrambles mechs’ memories for a fresh start...

Ah, that. Even Starscream and Shockwave agreed on the last item. Nobody had ever retrieved memories from before the Well.

Soundwave still had his memories, even if the last ones were of his symbionts’ drawn-out execution, and himself falling into a massive system shock he’d hoped would offline him. Against all odds, he and his clade were alive, together, not in pain. Soundwave didn’t move, online his optics, or run scans. Let the harsh world be on pause!

He wished. His audio suit rebooted, as the painful reminder about his broken firewalls and the stolen shield of his code-mandala. So far, bearable: the tiny sounds of a quiet room. For the first time, Soundwave had heard the vents of his symbionts directly, through his audios. Their breathing had always _looked_ dear, the six-sector ring in his mandala moving with the pulse of life; nobody had told him it _sounded_ cute.

He heard the equipment that must be medical, his own vents, and another silent mech in the room - a nurse or a guard. The sounds brought on the distinctive welding-fume tang of the outer space, the raindrop patter on his armor, and random bright shapes dancing in his visual field. He was back in the Pit: the first day of his functioning.

***

A nameless mech onlined into a noisy world of a lower Kaon manufactory: the world made of pain. The clangs of the frame-building equipment, the bass hum of the power generators, the voices of technicians yelling over the din - each sound conjured crossover suffering all over the mech’s sensory net. High-pitch end-of-cycle beeps were the worst.

When neither joors of waiting for his systems to settle, nor several forced reboots, nor sharp kicks to the head fixed his problem, the town of Kaon almost decommissioned the screaming, thrashing, useless glitch of a newframe straight into the smelter. But then a curious off-shift technician watched the mech for a while, plugged into his medical port, and slapped a patch over his input protocols. It modified his firewall to re-code the audio input into plain text.

Primus below! The world fell silent, the torture done for the day.

“Lift your right hand,” the tech said, and the now-quiet mech obeyed. “Bend your knees” - he did. “Meow like a volt-cat” - he couldn’t, the patch must have broken his speech protocols. The tech laughed anyway. He laughed more as he designated the functionally deaf and mute newframe ‘Soundwave’ and ordered him to join the rest of his lot, drab mechs packed tight in a cargo cart, waiting for the cheaper night freight.

The crude hack was deemed enough for a bottom caste mech: voice-commands or text-commands, what else was there for his kind to understand? His supervisor counted his silence a bonus, yet even the lowliest data sorter desired to express himself. He also couldn’t fail to realize how much more _data_ one could mine from the rich waves his glitch denied him. In time, Soundwave hooked up with back-alley hackers to mod himself, to talk in broken sentences and to perceive pitch, volume, overtones, and other variables of sounds, way beyond word recognition.

In time, the hackers invited him to a room behind a seedy bar, where a scruffy barmech served acid-laced fiery moonshine still warm from his illegal, untaxed still. The regulars, a ragtag bunch of rowdy mechs led by a strangely pacifist miner named Megatronus, welcomed Soundwave as one of the oppressed. In time, Soundwave had emerged from his obscurity as a devoted loyalist of the Decepticon Cause, a skilled spy, and a formidable hacker. He’d never stopped modding himself.

Soundwave reclaimed his mocking name as a mech who could listen in on the very thoughts, honing his oversensitivity into a unique telepathy-like power. He reclaimed the crude sharp-edged chevron atop his helm, the mark of a low caste, as the feared symbol of the Decepticons.

Their movement swelled. It grew darker as it grew stronger, as the Decepticons began to reclaim the rest of what was rightfully theirs from their oppressors. They gave the seedy bar to the (formerly scruffy) barmech when they appropriated it from its owners; he kept his moonshine still as the nostalgic centerpiece. The merry technician who’d saved Soundwave’s life ran the manufactory, producing soldiers for the Cause. Soundwave had the manufactory spark him a clade of symbionts. The tiny sneaky mechs gathered intel where he couldn’t go. Once the Decepticons took over the rest of Kaon, they marched on to the neighboring city-states. Their revolution turned into a full-out civil war, the idealistic miner Megatronus into the ruthless warlord Megatron. Miner, warlord, tyrant: the Decepticon leader always listened to his spook’s advice. Everybody else kept away from Soundwave, and he kept to himself, his glitch, his job, or maybe his personality robbing him of skill and desire to hang out.

Soundwave and Megatron weren’t lovers as the gossip had it. They were closer than lovers, closer than friends: comrades sharing every ideal of their Cause. Between that romantic bond and his dear clade, the reclusive surveillance officer had enough of a personal life. For his bodily needs, he had his hands and his private fantasies about a pretty Autobot saboteur whose lithe black-white frame he happened to find pleasing. He had enough.

He thought he had enough until he realized he didn’t, until he grabbed Jazz for a pet and held on as he would have a lover. To give Jazz up was to let go of the ledge over a gaping smelter.

Was his analogy upside-down? _Not_ giving Jazz up cost Soundwave Megatron, and through Megatron’s madness, their Cause. And the saboteur? Soundwave never really had him, not even when Jazz’s body was shackled to Soundwave’s berth.

***

Reunited with his clade, Soundwave’s systems were settling, as if dislocated joints clicked into their proper alignments. Symbiont spark-bonds couldn’t break while he lived. As a carrier, he couldn’t outright kill himself, but he’d unhinged his protocols enough to let the Autobots do the job, and to stop his symbionts’ suffering. A massive upheaval. Now, a part of his essence, of his _life_ returned to him with each nanoklik next to five tiny, warm, drowsy frames. He sensed Rumble in peaceful stasis in the next room.

A mercy, a pause.

“Boss! Yer awake!” Frenzy exclaimed, and then Soundwave questioned if he was dead after all, his spark rerouted to the Pit, into electrified lava that also managed to be razor-sharp.

_Ironhide taunting Soundwave in the corridor, each burst of sound a burst of dizzy pain scrambling his mind, interrupting his work on a crude firewall override. More and louder in the brig; music composed of patterned agony; crawling on through knives and blaster fire, his anti-torture coding delayed by the torture. His bond reconnecting, his symbionts in terror, Megatron slamming Rumble into the wall, the unbearable need to make that not be, to stop, to..._

Soundwave was pulled into the present by the frantic tugs on his bond.

**Sorry-sorry-sorry-frag-forgot! What have they done to you? What’s wrong? Who do I kill? Boss?** the symbionts questioned, aware of the piercing pain Frenzy’s voice had caused. Luckily, they spoke over their bond this time. Luckily, Soundwave was tied to the berth with wide magna-bands across his ankles, thighs, wrists, and chest, or his spasm would have spilled the little mechs to the floor.

“Do not make noise,” someone whispered nearby. Soundwave heard; he also saw reddish HUD static, tasted rust, and felt the light electric rain ghosting over his armor.

Soundwave onlined his visor and lifted his head. It was hard, so heavy: he was exhausted, and sluggish under his pain medicine. He saw the Autobot medbay, the shelves stocked with tools, nanite pastes, and green med-grade energon, with several monitors hooked to his frame. His spark sunk. Unlike the Decepticons, the Autobots didn’t seem to hurt for raw supplies, or for tech: for the competent leadership.

Soundwave saw his symbionts in shackles, and a sleek white-blue mech on guard, a heavy blaster pistol in hand by his chest, not aiming but ready. Mirage, the Spec Ops spy who’d argued for Soundwave’s execution when he’d rescued Jazz.

Soundwave lowered his head back, looking up, at the ridiculous orange ceiling of the Autobot base. He didn’t think his enemies repaired him and his clade for charity. With his symbionts in the Autobot custody, he might soon wish he’d died when he had his chance.

**Soundwave: needs quiet,** he ordered over the spark bond, then added, **Soundwave: stable. Ravage: report events since stasis.**

The symbionts couldn’t transform to dive into his chest, and Soundwave couldn’t micro-transform the dock for them while shackled. Even with the slower bond-talk, Ravage finished in a couple of kliks, saying, **Starscream speculated the mission was Jazz’s initiative, done in secret from the other Autobots. Jazz hasn’t denied it.**

Soundwave sent Ravage a warm pulse of thanks for his succinct summary, and then whispered, “Mirage: state Autobots’ intentions.”

His voice forced his sensory net to conjure dancing blue rings, the smell of crystal gardens, and the cool wind on the inside of his empty symbiont dock. Even if his hack had been ready, he couldn’t afford to reduce speech to the bare text. He needed more clues than that about his enemies: inflections, tone, modalities, pace, sighs, cadence.

His guard wasn’t providing any: Mirage inclined his head to show that he’d heard, but remained silent, probably comm-ing his superiors for orders.

Enemies. The Autobots had captured him, hacked him, tortured him. Soundwave had expected that much. The Autobots had been breaking their Code to hurt the Decepticons who had hurt Jazz. Soundwave was number one on that list, wasn’t he?

He’d expected Jazz to hurt him on purpose, as well. Jazz, sparing him pain while hacking? Jazz, leading a mission to extract the symbionts? Jazz: always surprising.

And always pragmatic. Soundwave supposed the saboteur would copy Megatron’s arrangement, now that he knew how well that had worked. Symbionts hostage; Soundwave paying for his past, by suffering and by serving.

Would he serve his enemies the Autobots? Would he serve the embodiment of the ideology he’d fought for millennia, Optimus Prime? Would he serve his… _Jazz_?

Megatron had stripped Soundwave of his rank, of the faction badge they’d designed together, of saying ‘No’ to the whims of any Decepticon, be it make-work, torture, or interface. For the first time, Megatron had disbelieved Soundwave’s pledge of loyalty.

Who was right and who’d been deceived?

Was he crazy, and Megatron sane? Had the warlord realized what Soundwave was only beginning to see: the significance of his officer’s obsession with an Autobot? Realized that Jazz was not an entertaining pet, as Soundwave had kept telling his captive (and himself), but a misguided grab at hope? Realized that a while ago, Soundwave had quit giving futile advice to a deaf tyrant, buried himself in his technical work, and sought an illusion of power in his ever-extending surveillance nets - while their Cause kept failing to deliver any empowerment anymore? That the rampart of Soundwave’s loyalty had hidden cracks all through its foundation?

Megatron’s punishment: meant to expose the cracks. How ironic. The punishment had only strengthened Soundwave’s self-delusions. He’d almost died with them - from them! Soundwave chuckled without mirth, then shook his head at the surprised glances from his symbionts. He was emoting out loud. He didn’t know who he was anymore, whose agenda was superior, who was right and who’d been deceived. Why not serve the Autobots, if it kept his symbionts safe? He would.

Jazz must have guessed that he would.

Ambient sounds of mechs’ frames, medbay equipment, and sleepy symbionts shuffling in their cuddle pile made Soundwave’s sensory net glitch random colors, hot and cold touches, smells and taste. Distractions or not, he must get to work, now that he’d made his decision.

Should he finish patching his firewalls for his sound-to-text override? Jazz would just break them again, and that _hurt_. Soundwave hadn’t allowed the captive Jazz to keep firewalls, so he couldn’t expect that mercy. Unless… Soundwave hadn’t even thought of _haggling_ with Megatron; his cooperation with the Autobots could be conditional. Worth trying.

He began to compose a list. The easy, obvious items came first. Full fuel rations? Scratch that, not always feasible at war. The same level of fuel rations as the Autobots. Medical treatment? Likewise, no worse than everyone else. Enough dock time to keep his symbionts healthy? A must. A roaming allowance, to sate their inherent need to explore? That, or an access to virtual reality in their cell.

Soundwave cycled a deep vent, pulled his EM field back tight, and throttled his spark bond before tackling the heavier items. Could he avoid repetitions of his last night? The Autobots had never broken their Code as openly. Some soldiers had briefly roughed up ‘still resisting’ captives after battles, or ‘forgotten’ brig rations of Decepticon prisoners. His near-death must have been an oversight, but the torture wasn’t. An officer and then the guards had been hurting Soundwave on camera, for two joors. That’s it, then: the Autobot Code didn’t apply anymore. More modest demands: no torture for his symbionts, and nothing debilitating for himself. He had a chance here, because it was Vortex who had mutilated Jazz’s optics and audios, not Soundwave.

Vortex. Soundwave’s valve clenched from a phantom assault of a shock baton, and then the Autobot guards laughed at him thrashing on the floor as he silently begged Primus to take him with his next overload, and then it was Jazz writhing in Soundwave’s shower, tied up and pinned so that the water stream hit his interface-sensitized valve just right… Soundwave’s tank roiled. He soft-reset, to abort the memory purges. After what he’d done, asking not to be sexually assaulted would only earn him mockery. The Autobots were likely to punish him that way again. He’d have to endure, and it wouldn’t be gentle: nobody here was as thankful to him as Breakdown, or found him attractive enough to tame as he’d tried to tame Jazz.

Except some of Jazz’s feelings he’d read had been… No. Soundwave wouldn’t build any more delusions out of lies, telepathic echo, and involuntary reactions of a captive frame. Jazz had made very clear that he found Soundwave _disgusting_. Jazz hadn’t said a word to Soundwave during the interrogation; he’d probably hated to be in that room no less than Soundwave had. The saboteur had plugged in a few suppressors, a resonant disruptor, and his data cable, hacked Soundwave in an impressively ruthless style, downloaded the data he sought, and rushed away.

Soundwave was checking for loopholes in his symbiont-visitation requirements when the door slid open, the whoosh sending hot rollers over his struts.

Ratchet was one of the loudest mechs in both factions. When Sideswipe and Sunstreaker had first dragged the captive Soundwave into the Ark, he’d briefly come to, and Ratchet could be heard from the far end of the corridor leading to his medbay.

It was eerie to see the medic enter so silently. Ratchet lifted the top part of Soundwave’s berth to elevate his head, then pulled in an antigrav stand with a large data pad on it. Still without a word, he unspooled his wrist cable and plugged it into the pad, then plugged Soundwave’s cable for him. By sheer habit, not even intending to hack the medic, Soundwave tried to push through the uplink. With a zing to his synapses reminding him of his place, the pad’s impressively layered defenses pushed him right back into the text-only mode. His days of control over networks were over.

Soundwave sent plain text to the screen, ::Ratchet: state Autobots’ intentions.::

::I need to scan you first and run some tests,:: came the response, while Ratchet transformed a scanner out of his wrist.

Translation: the Autobots were still debating what to do about Jazz’s newest surprise. Possibly, about Jazz.

Maybe the two of them, the former-Decepticon-nobody and the forever-rebellious-saboteur, would end up neighbors in their brig cells.

[Music mandala by Krinsyn](https://krinsyn.tumblr.com/post/169928280105/special-synesthesia-song-commission-for-12drakon) 


	10. The Last Mission

_Rations for the clade: on par with the Autobot soldiers._

_Medical treatment for the clade: on par with the Autobot soldiers._

_No physical punishment of any kind for the ~~clade~~ symbionts._

_No permanently debilitating punishment for Soundwave._

_~~No forced sexual acts.~~ _

_~~A joor~~ Half a joor of roaming per day for the symbionts, or a compatible VR simulation._

_~~Daily~~ Twice-daily visits between Soundwave and his symbionts, at least a breem long, with docking._

_~ A draft of Soundwave’s conditions for his cooperation_

 

“Soundwave should be in the brig! He can’t be secured in the medbay! Not with his Unicron-spawn loose around him!” Red Alert shouted, hands shaking, shoulder tires spinning, and antennae sparkling on the verge of a shut-down. He stuttered, “And you, you - you should be right next to him, Jazz!”

“Stop that, ya absurd glitch!” Ironhide bellowed, jumping to his feet and slamming his fist on the table. The loud bang dented the surface and spilled Jazz’s cube of energon.

Jazz didn’t flinch; Prowl glared; Red Alert recoiled. He’d fall off his chair if Optimus hadn’t caught him. The Prime kept holding his security officer in a hug. All he gave Ironhide was one intent look: not a reproach, but an invitation to do better.

“Ya’ll have to go through me to get ta Jazz.” Ironhide didn’t yell this time.

Prowl’s black doorwings canted up in irritation. “Arresting one another is an engaging play, but can we please talk strategy? Starscream’s plan has 75 to 95% probability of success if he continues to cooperate, margins dependent on other factors we should be discussing right now.”

“Please proceed,” Optimus Prime ordered, his _please_ in contrast with his firm tone.

Jazz went to grab a cleaner drone from its hatch under the energon dispenser. The soft-edged orange machine the size of Jazz’s hand got busy on the table, moving through the shiny pink spill this way and that, in semi-random patterns that looked almost alive. Cute. Compelling mechs to watch.

Red Alert shifted, and was released from the hug. His vents stopped hitching, and his voice sounded controlled. “The first item in Starscream’s plan is to neutralize their combiners. And the first thing Jazz does on his escapade is shooting Vortex, Bruticus’ left arm. A coincidence? Jazz, how long have you been conspiring with Soundwave and Starscream?”

Jazz sighed. It didn’t take paranoia to see that the situation was a slagging suspicious mess. “I haven’t talked with Screamer before today, or read his chip till now,” he said evenly. “I shot Vortex because I had a bad turn in there, watchin’ the slagger at his job. That works out for the plan, but it ain’t right. Soundwave’s brats seemed as surprised to see Starscream as I was, so he’s not involved.”

Prowl asked, “Are you quite certain Vortex is dead?”

Jazz took his heavy blaster out of his subspace and dropped it on the table in disgust. “This, on the highest, half a clip, point-blank through the spark. Coulda fit this ‘lil guy into the melt-hole” - he pointed at the orange drone - “only there was nothin’ of that messed-up spark left to clean up.’

“79 to 95% probability of success without Bruticus,” Prowl supplied. “Let us discuss Devastator and Menasor combiners next.”

“That’s where Soundwave comes into play,” Jazz replied, subspacing his gun. “Starscream confirmed our old intel. When the ‘Cons forged the Stunticons, Soundwave helped to put in their loyalty codes. He was also the one who hacked the Constructicons back on Cybertron. Soundwave knows the combiner coding inside and out. He can help me build a backdoor virus into their loyalty protocols.”

“Loyalty? That is slave programming you are talking about.” Optimus Prime kept his voice even, but his tightly clenched fists betrayed his outrage. “The Autobot Code is clearly incompatible with Starscream’s plan.”

“I propose we modify this part of the plan to align with the Autobot Code,” Prowl said. His doorwings twitched, and Jazz pushed his chair back just in case. The strategist’s restrain had snapped into a table-flipping tantrum last time his detailed battle plan had been discarded, yet again, for skirting the Autobot Code. “Instead of forcing the two combiners to fight one another, make them march beyond our lines and surrender. After they do, Jazz and Soundwave will scrub the slave codes from their systems. The Constructicons are likely to defect right away when that happens.” He paused, calculating. “Conditional on the completion of that part, the probability of the final success will be at least 85%.”

“Prime, I hate slave hacks, but we’ll only control them for a short moment this way,” Ironhide pleaded.

“We gonna have to fix every part of the new plan that came from Starscream. Way too cruel.” Jazz declared. “What Prowler said isn’t, it’s the kindest special operation ever, even if I gotta dirty my hands with slaver hacks.”

Optimus inclined his head. “If Megatron has lost his last shreds of sense and decency, neither we nor the humans can afford any more delays.” He gave a heavy sigh. “Jazz, are you absolutely sure you feel healthy enough to work with Soundwave? That is more than anyone would ever order you to endure. I am not convinced you should be volunteering.”

“Have to,” Jazz said, his optics glued to the idling orange drone. “Who else? Can’t miss that chance to end the war. Still, I’ll leave my blaster with Blaster,” he tried to joke. Nobody laughed. “Yeah, Boss-Bot, I’ll be fine.”

Out of the corner of his visor, Jazz caught Optimus’ understanding glance, as if the Matrix of Leadership gave its bearer telepathic abilities on par with Soundwave’s. Fine? It would be torture, Jazz bound to the rack of his own design. Because he felt complicit in cruelty. Because he’d be directly responsible if their plan failed to work and the war continued. Because he thought it was his job to find Soundwave the survivor a safe enough place in the new order of the world.

The Prime nodded his agreement. Nobody else argued.

Jazz stood up. “I’ll go chat with Sounders then,” he said lightly.

His fuel tank churned. He put the little drone back into its charger hatch on his way out. Before he closed the door, he heard Prowl’s measured voice, “Even if Megatron orders the full security overhaul, it will take time. With Soundwave cooperating, if we move within two days, the chances of successfully overriding their electronic defenses are…”

***

Ratchet’s optics stayed narrowed, denta clenched, and EM field pulled tight; Soundwave didn’t doubt the doctor’s disdain. Still, his exam was thorough, his medical questions detailed, and he stayed quiet to avoid triggering the worst of Soundwave’s glitch. A forged medic: his basic programming as unyielding as the heavy duty magna-bonds pinning every part of Soundwave to the berth.

A break, until the others came for him. The Autobots would be less haphazard in punishing their captive, now that they had means to make him cooperate. Maybe they would leave it to the more knowledgeable among them?

::Jazz is on his way to see you,:: appeared on the data pad, as if on cue. Ratchet deleted their discussion of Soundwave’s wounds from the data pad they’d been using to minimize sounds, unplugged his wrist cable, and left.

Jazz. Soundwave’s energon ran cold in his fuel lines. Why did it have to be Jazz? Had the saboteur managed to curb his disgust enough to personally partake in Soundwave’s punishment? Or was it for another hacking session? It should be quick, if so: Soundwave hadn’t fixed his broken firewalls, and didn’t plan to resist. He pulled up his list of conditions, and braced himself for meeting his nightmare in person.

His symbionts were locked up in the next room, in a deep recharge, tiny frames exhausted by their self-repairs. He shrank his bond’s data flow to the barest minimum: only his life signs without any sensory data, thoughts, or feelings. Soundwave was glad his symbionts could skip what was coming next.

Jazz entered, and froze with his back to the closed door, a tableau in black and white Soundwave couldn’t help to admire. A memory file retrieved without a conscious request, from when Jazz had first entered Soundwave’s quarters on the Nemesis, brought at gunpoint. He’d stilled his frame back then, as well: attentive, lithe, ready. Shackled. His EM field in restrained turmoil as Soundwave circled around his gorgeous catch… Soundwave barely stopped his vocalizer from a pathetic moan of pain.

Jazz stepped closer, his EM field pulled back too tight to sense, and plugged a wrist cable into the data pad. Unlike the first interrogation, the saboteur must want to talk.

::hi soundwve,:: he typed.

Soundwave trembled, then scoffed at himself. It was only a greeting. He should save his terror for when shock batons came out. At least his captive-turned-jailer talked in text, not in complicated, painful audio waves.

Light moved behind Jazz’s visor, but the saboteur kept his gaze on the screen. Too disgusted to look at his prisoner?

Soundwave had to say something, to reply. ::Jazz: state Autobots’ intentions,:: he requested.

::sure. we intend 2 sav som lives, ‘bot, ‘con, &human. start frm yer clade.::

Jazz got down to business right away, flashing his main bargaining chip: the fate of Soundwave’s symbionts. Did that mean the Autobots had an urgent request? If so, Soundwave might be able to negotiate a better deal. He modified his list to have two daily visits with his symbionts instead of one, and then texted: _“Soundwave: will cooperate, under conditions. List of conditions: attached.”_ He sent his list to the pad, and waited.

As the saboteur read, his control of his EM field slipped, and Soundwave caught the edge of Jazz’s _anger-pain-disgust_. Jazz gave a low whistle, making Soundwave’s abdominal plating tickle and all objects in his visual field blink in yellow halos. When the saboteur finally crossed his gaze with Soundwave’s, he shook his head.

No? Maybe Soundwave miscalculated. But how? His list was modest, if the Autobots wanted his full cooperation. He didn’t even request a respite from torture. If Jazz rejected that out of hand, and if the Autobots didn’t intend to kill their prisoners, what… Oh. No. No!

His fuel tank lurched, his spark spasmed, and he thrashed in his bonds. The restraints would’ve had no give even if he weren’t weak from his wounds. Soundwave dropped his head back to the headrest, waiting for Jazz to mock his feeble protest.

It hurt to lose the last bit of hope he didn’t know he’d had. Of course! He must be officially outside of the Autobot Code, his status nothing, not even Out-of-Tune. Yesterday’s public rape: not deemed such against a disposable nonperson. The Autobots: would use any means to ensure his cooperation. Why keep hostages, threaten, or negotiate? They could simply install slave routines. The Autobots could order him to send his symbionts on spying missions or sabotage operations, however dangerous, without any chance to resist or refuse.

They’d break not only his firewalls, but his ability to build firewalls. To build any system in his mind. To make...

Ratchet stormed through the door and hissed, “Stop _this moment_ whatever you are doing to him, Jazz. Take care, the mech’s recovering from a spark surgery and a system shock.” He ran a scan with his built-in tool, his lips moving in furious silent cursing.

The medic must have been alerted by his monitors. Excellent care. Soundwave expected Jazz to take care, as well. Unlike the Decepticons, the Autobots didn’t squander resources and _property_.

Jazz stirred out of his stock-still data gathering mode, lifted his hands in surrender, and whispered, “Wasn’t me, Ratch! He musta had a memory purge, Primus knows he’s got reasons. Look, I came in, said hi, see for yerself, that’s all I did,” he flicked the data pad with a finger. “I answered a question, got this load of scrap in return, he’s askin’ us not to mutilate him when we torture him, and then…”

Soundwave was twitching from the effects of the long string of whispers. Ratchet placed his hand over Jazz’s mouth, then pointed at the pad.

Jazz nodded, and sent his next words there. ::oh. i shook my hed. slag1t soundwave, what do u think we wud do 2 u that ppl havnt yet don3?::

::Soundwave: assumed conditions rejected. Logical conclusion: slave coding.::

Ratchet poked his finger at the data pad with such force that it spun in the air on its antigrav stand. He glared at Jazz, hissed severely, “Explain well,” and left.

Jazz scowled at the pad, paused as if considering, and then nodded to himself. His words appeared, ::h8 tese things 4 lng talks. tell u wot, lets go dirct.:: He took his cable out of the pad, cycled a deep vent, and then plugged it into Soundwave’s data port, next to Soundwave’s cable going out to the pad.

With Soundwave’s firewalls broken, Jazz could have forced the connection, but he sent a curt handshake ping, and waited.

With Jazz’s side open for the link, Soundwave could have mounted an attack, but that would be pointless, so he let Jazz in.

By cable, the saboteur spoke, *Yer torture? Wasn’t authorized, won’t happen again. We’re still the Autobots. I didn’t get your brats here to pretend-play like I’m Megatron. What I figure is, a thing or two what happened to ya’ll coulda given you a tiny bit of doubt in a few of yer life choices. Have I figured right, Soundwave?*

*Jazz: assumed correctly.* The saboteur hadn’t asked point-blank if Soundwave was doubting _Megatron_ ; Soundwave appreciated the discretion.

*I’m not gonna let you read my mind just to make ya believe this isn’t my elaborate Spec Ops plot goin’ as planned.* Instead, Jazz let his EM field unfurl, the nightmares mirroring Soundwave’s, with a thread of hope. Lying with EM was complicated. Jazz could have, but Soundwave didn’t think he was. Jazz pulled his field back and continued, *I wouldn’t do this by choice - to anyone.* The saboteur looked Soundwave straight in his visor. _Not even to you._ *Megatron handed ya to us on a silver platter when he sent you into battle starvin’ and hurt. He mighta wanted ya dead. I can’t tell with him anymore. The mechs who released my vid did want ya dead, that’s a fact. But here you are. Megs then handed us a pile of lil’ symbionts, tied up for our convenience and terrified enough that they wanted to come with us - that’s a gift bow on top. He’s losin’ it.*

Dared Soundwave believe that Jazz hadn’t released the video? That Jazz didn’t want him dead? Primus below! Jazz wasn’t asking him to admit treason, but Soundwave forced out the heavy words. *Megatron: sacrifices tactics for indulgence. Tactics, strategy… Cause.*

There, he said it. The saboteur paused as if to give Soundwave a moment to mourn, then nodded. *Yer clade prisoners, plus Megs mad - now the ‘Cons are weak enough for us to win the war. Starscream knows which way the wind’s blowin’, and he’s gonna make sure he’s flyin’ high at the end. You? Once you heal up, we can stick you in stasis and then wake you up in time for yer war crime trial. By the book, hundred to life in jail. That’s the worst that we’ll do to ya, hear? Not torture or slavery, none of that sick slag!*

Was Jazz here to bring a new hope, as in Jazz-dreams? Would Soundwave dare to grasp a new purpose, beyond living his days out in prison or in miserable thrall to the enemy cause? *Jazz: implies other options.*

*Right. If you help us, we can finish the war much faster, with fewer dead and wounded. That counts for a lot against yer… past deeds. We’ll have you on what you do well - coding, surveillance - not on lethal force missions, and we’ll minimize those. We don’t want casualties, not even ‘Con, though I’d understand it very well if you felt like murdering some of them. I hate to say it, but I murdered Vortex.*

Soundwave wanted to rub his dock cover where the Out-Of-Tune glyph had replaced his faction badge, was stopped short by his bonds, and then shook his head. When he thought about his former comrades in arms, he didn’t imagine his turn at tormenting them. Away, he wanted away. Surveillance would be hard enough, but at least there would be a screen between him and his faction. His _former_ faction.

Soundwave didn’t fill Jazz’s pause with a reply, so the saboteur continued. *If other ‘Cons see us treatin’ you decently from now on, they’re gonna be more willin’ to surrender or defect. Especially if things go worse for their side.*

*Outcome: unlikely. Soundwave: unpopular.*

*Soundwave: never failed to guess what people wanted and why.* Jazz shook his head with a chuckle that sent chills down Soundwave’s back strut and a flock of sharp-ended tangles flying across his vision. The irony tasted of copper. Not bitter, as people claimed, only tangy, for all the pain it pinged in his memory banks. Soundwave must have winced, because Jazz abruptly fell silent, and put his palms together in a careful gesture that seemed to be his new habit. After a pause, saboteur’s next words through the cable had no twists. *It’s not about the ‘Cons following yer shinin’ example. It’s about the ‘Cons seein’ that the ‘Bots aren’t harsh. Starscream _trusted_ that I’d come for your symbionts, and his plan? It assumes yer clade collaborating with us. Whether he thought we’d reprogram you for that or not, he didn’t say, but… We. Will. Not.*

Condescending? Soundwave didn’t think so. Jazz must be following Ratchet’s orders to explain well. *Jazz: state first assignment.*

*Makin’ a back-door hack for the loyalty protocols to force Constructicons and Stunticons to surrender.* Jazz smirked, silently this time. *The second assignment is to scrub the slagging slave code from them altogether.*

*Assignment: acceptable. Jazz: state other conditions.*

*You’ll stay in the brig once outta the medbay. Same cell as yer symbionts.* Jazz gestured at the data pad. *Fuel and repairs, as good as the Autobots have. Yer coding’s a big ol’ ball of nasty - gonna take longer to properly sort out that glitch of yours than to hack all the ‘Con defenses. Am I right?* Soundwave nodded. *Then we’ll repair it after the war ends. Patch it up if ya know how. Meanwhile, we’ll use ya to practice our stealth and quiet.* Jazz gave a soundless chuckle, then sobered, his accent almost gone. *Nobody will hurt you on purpose. At least two officers will be there whenever you talk with anyone, like Ratch is watchin’ us now. Yer telepathy blocker and stasis cuffs stay on till the war’s done. You get a Spec Ops guard if you go out of your cell. Symbionts can go out one at a time, cuffs on. Tell the brats to be nice, ‘cause Blaster volunteers for their walkies.* Jazz shrugged. *Where would they even run?*

Where indeed. That was… incredibly lenient, even if the Autobots intended to use his fate for their propaganda. Lenient, and impersonal. Jazz: not Megatron. Jazz: seeking to hire a skilled professional for a mission. This wasn’t about shackles and shockers, about revenge or apologies, about Jazz being Jazz and Soundwave being Soundwave.

Strictly work. How… doable.

And yet he had to ask, while they had a few last moments of privacy before another officer networked with them. *Jazz: why?*

*Freedom is the right of all sentient beings, mech.*

The faction line? *Jazz: state real reason.*

The silence stretched, Jazz’s lips in a tight line, Jazz’s hands clasped together with fingers dancing over one another, Jazz’s vents heaving too deep. Jazz: reminded who Jazz was and who Soundwave was. About to remind which of them was tied up this time?

No. The harsh glint left the saboteur’s visor, and he shook his head. *Right. This is my division’s chance for a spectacular sabotage. We turn both top enemy officers, and the whole slaggin’ war is done. The brilliant finale of our special ops, and then I can take my dream vacation on Splendora.*

Soundwave tilted his head: belying his brash words, Jazz slumped, as if four million years of combat fatigue caught up with him at once. *Jazz: same question.*

*Persistent slagger, aren’t ya?* Even without his sound-analysis filters, Soundwave could tell that Jazz approved. There was no pause this time, no hesitation. *The first was for the Autobots, the second for the Spec Ops, and you want to go there, for Jazz?* He cycled a heavy vent and looked away. *I didn’t even want my job back after my medical leave. Cruelty’s like a virus. I’d hate to look at Bumblebee and see Vortex. How about this? Jazz: done.* An imitation of Soundwave’s monotone carried no mockery. *If one has to explain, then it’s useless to explain. Do I have to explain, Soundwave?*

*Negative.*

A nod, a ghost of a smile. *Thought so. Saw that when I hacked ya. Soundwave: done. If we manage this mission together, they’ll know we are done. It will be over.*

Jazz didn’t have to explain who ‘they’ were or what ‘it’ was, either. *Soundwave: accepts mission.*

His processor went into overdrive. His spark was pulsing fast, flooded with _dread-hope-resolve_ , while his mind sorted hundreds of branching scenarios for the last, joint covert mission of the Autobot Spec Ops and the Decepticon Surveillance. They could do it!

His cooling fans kicked on. Soundwave felt ecstatic for a moment, then dizzy, the thoughts scattered by the smelter-hot wind that wasn’t there. And then a medical monitor beeped. Its low-battery light was blinking, Soundwave noticed as he smelled fire and saw the medbay erupt with incandescent lava that tasted of razors. The frantic cross-sensory signals came faster and faster. His HUD flashed overheat warnings, his head was in the smelter, and his symbionts in the next room onlined in a panic.

Soundwave sent a frantic, *Jazz: help!* through the link, before the world cascaded into chaos.

***

Soundwave began insisting on working while still in critical care. The time was crucial for hacking the Nemesis security. He could talk and walk, after a fashion, but he was not okay. Ravage blamed the Autobots for his master’s sabotage, while Laserbeak broke down and, in his binary beeps, begged them to make his carrier rest. Ratchet tried; Soundwave argued, then grew frantic, driving his medical readouts crazy until he was put into stasis.

Should the Autobots keep him sedated, as was their alternative plan, or go ahead with his pleas? Ratchet, Prowl, Jazz, and Optimus Prime met behind the closed doors; Ironhide and Red Alert recused themselves. Soundwave was not mentally competent for decisions, Prowl said. Symbionts’ lives were at stake, Ratchet fumed. Jazz steadied his trembling hands, cursing the cruelties, but then he spoke of choice. Prowl reminded about those 12-17% extra chances of ending the war if Soundwave cooperated. Ratchet, avoiding their optics, brought up all the lives that would save. The Prime finally gave his opinion: as ever, his Matrix of Leadership called for freedom.

They honored Soundwave’s choice and woke him up. Then they put his symbionts into stasis at his request.

The brig was out of question. Red Alert installed a dozen extra security cameras in the medbay. Into the main medical port on the back of Soundwave’s neck, Ratchet plugged a hovering monitor that knocked Soundwave into a brief stasis when his systems threatened to resonate out of control. Jazz and Soundwave stood by a large-screen Teletraan-1 console and coded, with Prowl cabled into their console as the officer-chaperone and an assistant programmer. After the first time the monitor activated and Soundwave fell (and Ratchet yelled at the mortified Jazz and the composed Prowl about their criminal negligence), they put Soundwave on an antigrav stretcher parked by the console.

They made a decent progress before Soundwave glitched again. When he woke up, they heard the distinctive whir-clicks of aborted micro-transformations. Visor dim, Soundwave stared at his shoulder where his blaster cannon failed to appear, then at the stasis cuffs on his wrists. And then he seemed to come to his senses, shook his head, and asked for a few kliks to patch his processor’s priorities.

Whatever he’d done worked, after a fashion. They kept hacking; they were going into the Nemesis security through the scheduling system, the most vulnerable one, because every Decepticon had an access. Soundwave had to ask what date this was. He must have disabled his chrono and other less essential protocols - or else his routines were breaking down. Jazz decided not to pry, not to draw attention to his prisoner’s mental issues, and simply told him.

In reply, Soundwave knelt, bowing low to Jazz with, ::Thank you, Master.::

Jazz froze, then reset his visor in a futile hope the three words on the screen would change, and then pried his fingers, one by one, out of the dents they’d made in Prowl’s wrist plating.

Soundwave groaned and sagged down on his stretcher, face hidden in his hands as he explained.

He hadn’t only patched his priorities. He’d hacked major overrides onto his unraveling processor: routines from the ready-to-use slave coding. If he forgot why he was here, Jazz would remember for him, and Soundwave would... simply obey. ::Soundwave’s solution: logical,:: he insisted. ::Jazz’s plan: must work.::

Prowl proposed a break. The two officers went for a short silent ride, then shared their thoughts under the red evening sky, then discussed ‘the Soundwave’s solution’ with Ratchet and the Prime. If Soundwave could cope with the new level of horror, Jazz could too, and so would the rest of his faction.

The three mechs kept programming. Soundwave kept kneeling and bowing to Jazz, his EM field flaring with helpless embarrassment. Jazz kept up his hand and breathing exercises so as not to purge his fuel tanks.

His monitor sent Soundwave into a reboot three more times that night. From each brief forced stasis, Soundwave woke up more confused, his movements more jerky, his texting more garbled, and his reactions to sounds more visible. But his solution seemed to work, in that his coding skills remained largely intact. His memory files regarding their last mission must have been multiple-saved; through all the glitches, his protocols kept routing his remaining processor power into that single cause.

Prowl made them take short breaks, stretch, and rest their optics. With great urgency pulsing unchecked in his EM field, Soundwave called them back to work after a klik.

Was that only his slave protocols taking a deeper hold? Jazz didn’t think so. They’d never know.

Late that night, the three of them grabbed a short recharge. They started working before the rest of the base woke up in the morning. The first almost-crash was so bad that they smelled the burning circuits: an electric short, all the way down Soundwave’s left arm. Ratchet replaced the parts, but the monitor clearly wasn’t enough against the crashes. Jazz plugged his cable into Soundwave (and another into Prowl, mirroring the data for security and oversight) - then synced for dual processing. A direct-interface network, an intimacy. The Pit.

One moment Jazz wanted to run away screaming his _fear-disgust-pain_ ; the next moment he had to fight his damned charge, horrified at his frame’s betrayal. What monster part of him responded to the network’s stimulation? Which misguided protocols should he burn with fire, because they found a wounded, broken prisoner - found _Soundwave_ \- even remotely attractive?

Prowl’s field was disturbed and doorwings canted high, but he never brought up his qualms. He wanted that 96% success for the Autobots; he wanted his friend Jazz to accomplish the goal that Jazz had chosen.

They persevered. When Jazz sensed random synapses firing in Soundwave’s mind, when the pain grew and the flame that wasn’t here billowed under phantom winds, Jazz rerouted Soundwave’s sensory net signals through his own protocols. He reassigned priorities and deleted errors; some code he changed by intuition, some by logic, all in a fragged-up mess of an emergency hack.

Soundwave fared better than he had under forced abrupt reboots. Yet on the next day, even the tiny sounds like breathing kept triggering sensory cascades that took all of Jazz’s time to untangle. They disconnected Soundwave’s audios (as they should have done earlier, Ratchet lamented). His vision wasn’t glitching as badly, but he kept his visor turned off most of the time, routing the console’s screen to his HUD instead. That reduced the data-load.

Prowl stepped to a shelf to reach their mid-day energon. Soundwave couldn’t see or hear, yet the vibration triggered Soundwave’s resonance. This time, pain came with pleasure, the mortified Soundwave fighting his charge and losing. Jazz swore at Primus and Unicron, and hunted down the stray data through Soundwave’s sensory net to subdue the glitch. Crash averted, Jazz sagged in relief, and then a memory purge slipped out of his control.

***

Jazz sat in the corner of Soundwave’s berthroom, knees hugged to his chest, helm hanging down, hands shackled in front, and visor dimmed. The wall vibrated from the loud music his broken audios couldn’t hear, barely keeping the saboteur this side of despair.

Soundwave appeared in front of Jazz, projecting telepathically, **Soundwave: back soon. Precautions: necessary.** He manhandled his unresisting prisoner: locked together Jazz’s ankles, tucked his elbows between his knees and chest, magnetized his right wrist and right ankle shackles to the wall, and took away his visor.

Jazz was too exhausted to flinch when he saw a movement of blue and white, with a splotch of red: Soundwave leaning close to kiss him goodbye.

It was a long day in a soundless, blurred world, with only vibrating walls for company.

**Audios: delayed.** Late in the evening, the words appeared in Jazz’s processor, accompanied by a pat on his helm.

Jazz screamed and jolted violently. The vibrations from the music had masked Soundwave’s soft steps, so Jazz had had no warning that Soundwave was home. The saboteur felt his shackles deactivate and got his visor reattached by hurrying hands, but he didn’t even move to stretch. He kept sitting as he was, trembling and trying to stop it, loathing his day, his week, and his life.

***

Jazz pulled himself out of his flashback, Soundwave out of his glitch, and everyone out of the network, at Prowl’s stiff request. The two Autobots walked away for a short break, their steps slow and soft, as if on a stealth mission to a weird base full of vibration detectors, yet lacking any cameras.

They returned in the same manner and kept working. Only the hyperfocus on the programming let Jazz cling to the brink of his sanity.

Soundwave… Soundwave could still code.

And Prowl? It was his nightly job to stand in the common room, his doorwings rigid and voice neutral, and to answer the worried and the curious. No, they weren’t causing Soundwave to glitch for torture. No, they weren’t compromising the Autobot cause in collusion with Starscream, we’ve been over that, haven’t we? Yes, Soundwave fell down in a full-frame seizure entering the washracks, and no, Prowl didn’t know what triggered that and didn’t want to know. Yes, they would remove Soundwave’s slave code soon, and no, Jazz couldn’t order Soundwave not to be his slave - please do reboot your processor out of idle and think for a nanoklik. Imagine the logic binds and system-crashing loops that would cause! No, no, Primus no, Soundwave kneeling in handcuffs, as he had in Jazz’s video, didn’t mean these two mechs were in any sort of a kinky play. Please focus on the strategy, and we can end this war soon. Very, very soon.

“How soon?” the Autobots kept asking. Prowl’s two-day estimate stretched into five on account of coding always taking longer than planned, and also Soundwave’s repeated crashes - but finally, they had a dynamic back door for the Nemesis’ security system. Mirage went to install what couldn’t be remotely accessed; Starscream made sure the spy wasn’t detected. The code hid itself and adapted to changes, Megatron’s remaining soldiers having no skill, or possibly no desire, to monitor for such attacks. Now the Autobots’ surveillance of the Decepticon base was on par with what Soundwave used to have.

Soundwave continued to have near-crashes, jerky seizures in his limbs, and a host of small glitches in every system in his body. He was too weak to walk, and prone to fall into micro-sleep for emergency defragmentation. Ratchet patched up Soundwave during breaks, while Jazz and Prowl were at officer meetings.

Despite Prowl’s assurances, the Autobots whispered about Jazz spending all his time with Soundwave in a private medbay room. He heard about the gossip from Blaster, who visited daily to bring hugs. Jazz ignored the warnings: he was too busy.

In three more days, they had a virus that would command the combiner gestalts to surrender. They woke up two flier symbionts. It took some doing, but Soundwave calmed down his bonded, who were horrified about his health and incensed to find Jazz their slave-master by proxy. Nothing for it: end the war sooner, be done sooner.

In the next battle, Laserbeak and Buzzsaw flew up to the giant multi-mech war machines, plugged data chips into the combiners’ ports, and escaped the seemingly-vicious Seeker fire that somehow missed them by rather wide margins. Devastator and Menasor paused, shook, and then slowly walked behind the Autobot battle line. Megatron bellowed orders; they ignored every one. And then the two combiners promptly fell apart into their constituent mechs.

The Stunticons cursed, freezing and sparking lightning from their armor seams every time they tried to attack the Autobots surrounding them.

The Constructicons didn’t surrender, as the Autobots hoped. There must have been a glitch specific to their shared protocols. It made them flap their arms, circle on the spot, and emit soft pitiful beeps.

The eleven prisoners were shackled, loaded into Skyfire’s cargo hold, and whisked away. The Autobots followed the shuttle-former in a caravan; the Decepticons took a few half-hearted potshots in their general direction.

Two days later, having heard from one-read files spread through their network that the Autobots had a cure for the common ‘Con slave code and were treating the captive enemies rather decently, the four surviving mechs of the Combaticon gestalt managed to subvert their protocols long enough to let themselves be captured. Megatron grew suspicious of Starscream, tried to interrogate him, and botched it, leaving the beaten Air Commander in a deep stasis lock. That night, seeing how the Constructicon Hook was gone and no other medics available, the Seekers broke into the brig. They left for the Ark, carrying their unconscious Winglord with them.

In the morning, Megatron led the rest of his shrinking army in a desperate all-out attack on the Autobot base. At the start of that battle, he was shot. A plasma bolt or two couldn’t penetrate the warlord’s heavy armor. Yet he fell.

Shooting stopped. In the sudden silence, Ratchet walked up to the corpse. He pointed at the largest of the holes, the one through Megatron’s spark chamber, and proclaimed, “Melted from the front, melted from the back, at many angles. Dead by the popular vote via blaster fire.”

Who was the next in line for the Decepticon command? Quiet, unsure, the Decepticon soldiers stood in a tight group, weapons lowered, glancing at one another and the Autobots. Then Starscream limped out of the Ark, one arm in a sling. With an easy grin and a one-shoulder shrug - none of his old grandstanding - he drawled, “As you were. There is a ceasefire until I finish peace negotiations with the Prime. Does anyone care for a drink?”

Mixmaster towed out a large antigrav pallet, piled high with sparkling engex cubes in pink, blue, and purple. There was enough for everyone, even the starved Decepticons.


	11. We Are Here

_Palacio de Cristal in Madrid, Spain_

 

“Till all are one.”

Seekers and Aerialbots flew in perfect sync, from many directions toward one point, as if enacting Prime’s words. The sky exploded. A sonic boom punctuated the dramatic pause in the speech, rocked the podium, and shook the crowd. Mechs were standing or sitting by tables in small groups, (former) Autobots and Decepticons split to two sides, like families of two humans in one of the local versions of the Endura ceremony.

Optimus Prime started to applaud first, wide ice-blue optics on the sky, hands clapping overhead. Starscream and Prowl stood up from their chairs on either side of him and also applauded. Then the crowd went wild, cheering and revving up engines, clapping at the skies made from fire and hope. The center of the fireworks was incandescent-white, unfolding into a giant alien flower, each petal in a different coruscating color, each petal tip chasing the jet who made it.

Two mechs at a tiny table outside of the crowd stayed quiet. Soundwave sat with his back straight, his frame so tense it was trembling, his hands on the table clenched into fists, his visor unseeing-bright. Jazz’s visor was locked on his counterpart. He was on the edge of his seat, poised and ready. A data cable linked his wrist to Soundwave’s.

The two seemed invisible to others, not even a gleam of celebration penetrating the dark disruptor field of their shared past. Jazz had spied on enough whispers to know that, amnesty or not, most ‘Cons feared that Soundwave would retaliate against them for his suffering; if not he, then his deadly - whatever Jazz was, lover-colleague-jailer. As for the ‘Bots, they hated to be reminded of the whole disturbing mess of torture, hacks, and forced interface. Seeing Jazz and Soundwave together, especially linked up, pushed mechs’ buttons. Sunstreaker would pick up a random fight, Red Alert’s horns would spark in paranoia, First Aid would go quiet for joors. So the ‘Bots didn’t look.

That’s why Jazz had insisted he and Soundwave must go to the end-of-war party. Invisible mechs got stepped on. So the (former) saboteur and surveillance officer made an appearance, stayed, and endured, counting kliks until they could escape the party, then the planet.

Mirage had come by their table earlier, the only one to do so, an outcast himself: a noble turned Autobot, and a feared spy. He had brought two fuzzy, low-grade cocktails, given Jazz’s shoulder a friendly squeeze, and even acknowledged Soundwave with a cold polite nod.

After Mirage had left, Soundwave had said he felt better, and wanted to try keeping his sensory net on. It had worked - until it hadn’t. Now the glitch was back, and Jazz sensed it through their cable interface. Each color of the rainbow flower in the sky felt like... It felt. It hurt, and raised Soundwave’s charge. It smelled too, and it tasted. Blue for vertigo and jet high-grade. Red for knife wounds and spice. Yellow for burns and acid.

Jazz noticed Ravage close by, on guard, ears flattered and fangs bared in shared pain. The other symbionts stayed huddled in the corner of the picnic tarp that Blaster had spread out for them and his clade.

Jazz couldn’t pay them any more attention, focusing on his usual job as Soundwave’s external sanity coprocessor. He dialed the pain down, tagged the input by proper sensory centers, ran the routines that dissipated the charge, and otherwise kept Soundwave from a miserable crash, an embarrassing overload, or both. He rerouted the real sensory input into Soundwave’s code-wheel. Jazz would have enjoyed the intricate, everchanging pattern like a suite of complex music, if not for Soundwave’s embarrassed, quickly deleted, recurring thoughts about tracing it on Jazz’s chassis.

A bit of distracting chat? Jazz tried, not sure if Soundwave heard, "Together, the major colors that the humans can see make for a symbol. Seems to mean a lot to ‘em. They even fight for it, or against it."

The fireworks faded and the mechs quieted down; Soundwave’s visor dimmed and tremors subsided. He pulsed _better-tired-thankful_ through the interface. The feeling was followed by the familiar tingle in Jazz’s processor, always unlocked these days for Soundwave to call for help, or to read the surface thoughts. The telepath wanted Jazz to keep talking.

**That symbol? Not for a faction or anythin’ of the sort. Just means, ‘We are here’ - for all sorts of ‘we’,** Jazz said-thought, and winked like a human: half of his visor darker-blue for a moment.

"Code: ultraviolet," Soundwave whispered.

The joke was stretched, but Jazz laughed, relieved that Soundwave was lucid enough to hear, to respond, to get and extend the analogy. It made Jazz realize how Soundwave’s reasoning about people had grown lately - that is, when his processor was up to thinking at all."Yeah, that's us, my mech - far out!" he said, then warned, "Mute yerself. They’re gonna do fireworks again." He wanted to avoid another glitch - and too-frequent use of his keys to Soundwave’s firewalls. These days it was always for help, and with permission. Even so, he preferred to give the recovering mech a chance at self-care.

***

In theory, Jazz and Soundwave’s spaceship could be shot by the quarantine armada of the Galactic Council. In practice, the space was slagging large, their survey vessel tiny and stealthy, and the Council had all but abandoned their watch. For a while now, Cybertronians had been too preoccupied with the war to venture that far.

Jazz piloted, though in hyperspace ‘piloting’ was mostly point-and-click, and rested, watching the shiny scrambled starscape through the windows, or the little orange cleaner droid’s random walks. Soundwave coded his sensory protocols, did some carrier things with his symbionts - Jazz didn't know what and didn't intrude, his truce with the little mechs still too fragile - and also rested. They ‘rested’ too much, Jazz thought: not recharging, not quite awake, time slipping between fingers, here and then poof, gone.

‘ _Autopilot disengaged. End point reached,_ ’ a melodious drone baritone announced.

The scans came back clear of the Galactic Council’s surveillance tech. “Come look, Soundwave,” Jazz called. “Atmospheric landin’! Those are always fun.”

He stretched, and cracked his knuckles. Soundwave took the co-pilot’s seat, obediently looking out of the front window. He nodded when Jazz said, gesturing at the planet, “Ain’t that gorgeous?”

Their destination’s coordinates were in black, beyond the gleaming sunset terminator. The dark side of the planet was just that, dark: as uninhabited as the Neutral Cybertronians had left the world vorns upon vorns ago, abandoning the small scientific settlement early in the war. Jazz put his hands on manual controls and gave the usual warning, “Mute yerself.”

Sightseeing wasn’t the main reason why Jazz called Soundwave here. Vibrations; the flashes of burning air; booms from high-pressure pockets - what would those do to Soundwave’s glitchy senses? Jazz had to be close and ready. Still, if one put his mind to not-slagged things, like sharing a beautiful sunset, the necessity became dignified.

***

They landed without incidents. The outpost’s buildings held onto a mesa’s top, looking eerily intact when illuminated by the ship’s projectors, then gone into the black night. Gravel crunched underfoot, a winding path in shades of dark gray and black in the headlights from Jazz’s chest, which he kept low.

Jazz and Soundwave slowly walked the path from the landing pad to the pavilion where they would live, from now until… Well, they hadn’t planned that far ahead. They wanted to finish repairing Soundwave’s protocols and to wait out the others’ ire. They needed to work through Soundwave’s apology and to rest, rest, rest. A pause, not an ending - quiet, without calls for happy.

Only Optimus Prime, Prowl, and Starscream, the leaders of the new Cybertronian government, were told where their (former) third officers went for their Pause. Jazz and Soundwave had searched through the archives, sifting data as only the heads of Spec Ops and Surveillance could. They had found hundreds of League of Light pavilions - or rather, former locations in burned-down bases, ruins of outposts, and radioactive craters where cities used to be. And then, they had found this treasure: one last pavilion apparently left unbroken, in a civilian outpost on a planet poor in mineral resources and devoid of organic life. Thousands of mishaps could have befallen the building. Fragile like a dream, here it was for them. Abandoned, forgotten, invisible. A perfect match.

Jazz stopped in front of the pavilion and switched his headlights to a stronger setting. He caught the ricochet of Soundwave’s scans on frequencies from radio to ultraviolet. For most part, the waves they sent went right through. The pavilion was made of thin gray lines and large black holes. It looked like its own schematics, which Jazz had downloaded before the journey.

The pavilion stood as a humble monument to League of Light values: simple, sustainable, and transparent. There was one tall, pyramid-ceilinged, empty octagon in the middle, and two low square rooms off its opposite sides. This basic unit would tessellate if a larger community wanted a bigger Pavilion of Pause. See-through walls were made of fused silica, one of the most widespread minerals in the galaxy. The narrow, cleverly calculated beams were synth-cement: ground-up local stone processed with strengthening nano-additives.

A few mech volunteers and a League of Light drone could build a pavilion in a decacycle of lazy evenings. Jazz and Soundwave had brought the few supplies they’d need, and would have built one here, even without a drone, if the original building had perished.

“It is here,” Jazz finally said. “Primus’ own fraggin’ miracle!”

“Highly improbable,” Soundwave agreed, and added, “Jazz and Soundwave: don’t have to rebuild everything from scratch.”

Jazz decided to count that as an analogy, rather than a damaged mech being unaware he’s stating the obvious.

The door was simple: one of the transparent wall panels fit with hinges. It had no locks. Jazz pushed the door and entered, his steps suddenly loud and echoing across the empty space. He adjusted his stance and moved as he would behind the enemy lines, a shadow in shadows. He walked to a square room and sat on a simple berth. He heard steps and saw Soundwave do the same across the pavilion. The symbionts stayed docked.

Jazz didn’t say good night, because their silent Pause had begun when they crossed the threshold. He lay down, hoping for a quiet recharge, but ready to cheat silence with cables and telepathy in case of a bad enough nightmare. The League of Light would approve.

***

Jazz rebooted as usual: ready to hide or fight, the EM field mimicking recharge, visor active in low-res, but unlit. Pretending not to be awake had saved his life on a few occasions, and had delayed pain on a few others. Once his scans reported him safe, he stayed in berth. He wasn’t thinking or planning - only resting. Diffused light comfortably streamed down onto him through the translucent pyramidal roof. After a while, he turned his head toward the middle of the pavilion and booted his vision all the way.

He saw a riot of rainbow glimmer and abruptly sat up, grabbing his face with both hands. When Jazz had been a prisoner, Soundwave had often taken his visor away, making his world dissolve into splotches of light just like this, and… _No, no, calm down,_ Jazz told himself, cycling his vents. His visor was here, and it kept streaming, at high resolution, what was really here: light refracted into different colors by thousands of clever miniature prisms etched into silica crystal. The world made sense; colorful glimmer resolved into walls, brighter splotches into the high-vaulted ceiling, and dimmer reflections into the polished floor. The support beams were there too, subtly elegant, so thin as to be almost invisible, but strong enough.

Jazz was a free mech. The war was over. Glimmering light was beautiful.

So was Soundwave, kneeling in the middle of the pavilion, his blue-white-red just more splotches among other colors. A memory came, of the kliks before Jazz’s last escape: Soundwave shackled on his knees, Jazz threatening him, Mirage coldly asking, captive Laserbeak in hand, _‘Jazz, are you still sure you don’t want them just shot?’_

Why that place, that moment? After all, Jazz had seen Soundwave on his knees plenty of times since then: every day until they removed the slave protocols. Maybe because that memory came with the same sudden, piercing pang of beauty.

Back then, the feeling had made Jazz offer Soundwave one last kiss, withheld in a cruel taunt as the kneeling mech had retracted his mask. Now?

Wait, why was Soundwave so quiet and still? Was he crashing? Already in stasis? Jazz rushed in, making no noise that Soundwave’s glitch would have turned into pain or unwanted pleasure. He ran close enough to merge EM fields, felt the calm awake waves, and ex-vented in relief. Soundwave wasn’t sick or hurt - only resting. Meditating. As Jazz was supposed to, the other’s continued serenity reminded him.

Jazz sank down to his knees in front of Soundwave, basking in the unusual peace in his field, and in softened light. _When captured, survive, escape, sabotage, in that order of priority_. They had done it: survived, escaped from the faction boundaries, and sabotaged the war. They were done.

**We are here,** Jazz said-thought, having no energy to untangle all that, hoping Soundwave would understand anyway.

Soundwave heard, and projected _thankful-hopeful-calm_ over the telepathic echo, **We are here.**

They settled into their comfortable still silence. Jazz’s visor focused on what was in front of it: Soundwave’s lips. Imagining a kiss, Jazz was strangely free from could-haves, regrets, or desires. After a while, he unfocused his visor into the sea of light, thinking of nothing at all. Resting.


End file.
